Property of mission control (the end.) 8

[froclown]

                                                           WHY?
Tuberculosis, Why have I written this word? Who knows, I'm sure I had a reason
though. Reasons are kind of hard to identify, since once they have accomplished what
they wanted done, they often disappear. Where does reason go once it's gone? What is
the reasoning behind that statement? I don't really have a reason, unless it's hiding from
me, reasons like to hide like young children sometimes. Sometimes I think other people
find reason behind reasonless statements, that is of course unless other people are better
equipped to understand the impulse behind making a statement then its originator was.
At any rate the caverns of doubt are deep indeed. Who knows anything? Who knows?
there is any thing outside oneself to judge by? Who even knows there is an individual self
to have these thoughts? One does not know, one can not know. One can guess, and one
can make assumptions. All assumptions are equally irrelevant, since they can't be known
to be true. Since nothing is known true to judge truth by, or even weather anything can be
said true or false. All one can know is that things appear certain ways, it appears that one
must do certain things, and than one will eventually appear to cease being at all. It also
appears that all things one can do between realizing one "IS" and finally not being
anymore is really irrelevant, because at best one can make a temporary impression on
others, and worst no impression on other or the world. Sine existence is without meaning
and quite absurd, since we can not know anything about it or if we exist at all, why not
think and do what you want to think and do, even if other believe this behavior is absurd?
If life appears absurd, why not be absurd yourself? We as apparently existing being,
whatever that entails, seem to enjoy the concept of freedom. If we act according to how
others, peers, society, religions, and corporations, to name a few want us to behave,
eventually we think the way they want us to think. In my opinion allowing others to
control what you think and do, doesn't fit the accepted definition of freedom. Worse yet,
we pay these others to enslave us, with money, which we only agree is valuable, but is
earned by sacrificing time. Time is the one thing we do not appear to have to spare. It
appears we have a limit of time between birth and death, to express and experience
freedom of thought and action. I for one find it a terrible waste to sell away our time, the
essence of our life, in order to by suppression of our freedom. Surly we must be a sorry
lot indeed, so confused by the complexity of finding a reason for existence that we are
easily duped by anyone who come along with a simple answer. We eagerly accept these
answers which call for us to buy products from corporations, get jobs to support the
government, and give our time and money to churches. You may be asking, "Why do we
accept these answers that cause more harm than good?" The simple answer is that most
people do not like to think, furthermore, most people can't bear having to tackle an
unsolvable problem. When some one come along and hands out a simple answer, like buy
cola or God created the world; people accept it, without question. They accept these
answers because not knowing an answer makes then feel confused and hopeless. When
an answer comes along they gain hope, "I now know I exist to drink cola", or in more cases
"I exist to praise God". So, either things exist or they don't may be both or neither, who
knows. The point is, if you always keep the question open and make up your own ideas,
you have bought your life and freedom for yourself. If on the other hand, you put full
belief in others ideas, you have closed the issue of existence and sold away your life and
freedom to others.





Short Essay, in which I Refer to Humankind as Man, for Simplicity
(A strong Anti-defamation current takes hold of the mind)
   Man has been granted by virtue of unknown circumstances to exist, as being
which can know the world, in which you inhabit. Your specific pattern interacts with
other patterns in a way that allows you knowledge of the world. Nothing else in all
known existence can comprehend the relationship between things as man is ably to.
Surely, you say, some other things may obtain knowledge, plants store information in
genetic codes, and evolve, and animals react to stimulus and thus both attain knowledge.
Though this appears true, would you not agree that even the most similar animals to man,
would envy man's ability to know? Also, by whose knowledge is the ability of other
things to know, attained? Only by a man using his ability to reason using knowledge, can
the idea of, animals having knowledge be attained. It appears that man is the one thing,
out of all other things in the universe that can attain knowledge, or at the least, the one
thing that can best attain and use knowledge. Man has come to exist briefly as the being
most capable of attaining knowledge. Oh, but knowledge is a heavy burden for man, for
with every new piece of knowledge comes a new responsibility. Thus you have created
and lived by the creed "Ignorance is bliss." What do I want with knowledge, if I am
"happier" without it, you say. I must convey to you that happiness is not the goal of man,
instead you should concern yourself with growth and survival. All living things must
process information to survive, plants do this by genetic mutation, and passive natural
selection. Animals process information by mutation, natural selection, and by the ability
to adapt to new situations. Man processes the information needed to evolve through
adaptation through knowledge. Man needed light and worth, knowledge of fire allowed
the adaptation of fire usage. When man was unable to move his possessions around fast
enough to meet his needs, knowledge developed the wheel. Man has develop many kinds
of knowledge over time, this knowledge allows him to live in the changing world.
Knowledge then provides growth and development of man. It is that man knows much
about the world he lives, and has over come its obstacles, but in the process he has
gained power. You have become lazy and corrupt with you power, you shape nature to
your design, when it is you who should shape to natures design. What you have done is
taken your knowledge and shrugged off the responsibilities that come with it. You live in
world of you create with your knowledge, under the strict laws of your knowledge.
Nature does not abide by your rules so you push it out of the way, to make way for cities,
which abide by your laws. Within these worlds of steel and concrete you build states and
have wars and politics over your artificial laws. You hide away in these worlds of
certainty and firm rules, and believe you have conquered nature. Man became lazier, and
stopped questioning the world, for man believes all the answers are held in his laws. Man
fears the unknown such that it he finds it better to feel safe and happy with fabricated
answers, rather than have to think the chaotic nature of reality. He has convinced himself
that his world is indeed the real world. In order to keep this illusion real, he must
constantly engage in activities to focus his attention on the present, and drink liquor to
forget the past. If man were to, think about the future, he would see the collapse of his
"perfectly" constructed world. Not that most folks care about the future, that doesn't directly
affect their present happiness. If man could be persuaded to care about the future, even if
simply for his own children's sake, he would see the necessity of developing a new kind
of knowledge. Knowledge not solely based of his own gratification, but of universal
understanding and the harmonious existence of all things. The first step is of course to
remove the goal of happiness, for its own sake. Then, with personal gain out of his mind,
man can begin to seek the knowledge he needs to continue his growth as an entity of
nature, instead of as a separate subset from nature. When man is in harmony with nature,
he shall find contentment beyond happiness, in all things.

Perverted thoughts about a cartoon skunk inspired this monstrosity, should we expect anything less from a Mad Goddess?
             S
The Poem
Directed, Produced and Written
By
Froclown Von Hogwasher.
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latyrueiwoqpvbcnxmz
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Mission Control inc.



Dispersing the Curse of Greyface
   Preliminary research results show this world to be dull and full of overly rule-
crazed individuals. They must constantly follow rules; they have specific sound patterns,
which must be made when meeting or passing each other. These sounds appear as
questions concerning general knowledge of one immediate surroundings and resent
experience; instead they are merely formal distractions. My theory is that people here are
brought up not to think deeply about anything, in order to discourage each other from
thinking, it has become customary to constantly acknowledge each other verbally.
People associate with groups and challenge each other's groups over dominance in hope
that one-day only people that fit the standards of their particular group will be
encountered. Each group has its own rules and customs, which must be followed, and
many subgroups coexist in a larger group called society, which has its own rules to be
followed. All societies are said to follow the rules of basic human decency. Human
decency is abstracted from the set of all possible actions. Problems arise constantly
because subgroups tend to contain rules contrary to each other and ever the larger group
to which they are a subset. This is first evident by the fact that societies often have
different ideas about what constitutes human decency. One society says you should kill
your adulterous wife, another says this is may not be done. These societies tend to have
wars, since the members of each believe their laws to be the only laws, and wish to be the
only society. With in a single society, subgroups form, labeled things like religions and
classes. Some of these subgroups can be immigrants from other societies, who continue
to have beliefs contrary to the society in which they now live. Religions are groups who
quite arbitrarily make up rules about metaphysical realities, creation of the universe, and
supreme beings. These religions demand that followers believe their rules so strongly that
they will not accept anything that doesn't correspond with their ancient presumptions.
These subgroups are constantly at war with each other and at times even society which
fosters them. There are far too many examples of this sort of rivalry to mention here, so I
shall go on.
   Why do these people create so many rules, if rules mostly lead to violence and
mistrust? People are generally afraid of the unpredictable, they realize that rules make
things predictable. People who are afraid that the next person they meet might kill them
or be friendly. When rules are created then people know the intentions of others. The
more rules there are, more predictable the world becomes. Next people worry about what
they don't know or can't understand. People get confused and become anxious or
depressed trying to think about tough subjects like "who am I" and how did "the world
get here". Eventually religions are invented to come up with elaborate explanations for
tough questions, so that people don't have to think about them, instead they can think
about growing food or building factories. These rules were at one time helpful to people,
they got people cooperate so they could keep themselves alive.
Rules began to pose a problem, when because of these rules, societies grew and
transportation developed. Since many societies developed apart from each other and in
differing climates, they developed different rules of conduct and different religions.
When any two societies met they would either combine, war, or both. In the case of war,
the two had such differing rules that they couldn't get along, and each thought the other
must be assimilated. When they combined rules defused between the groups,
subcultures arose. Other times conquered societies became subgroups of the conquering
society. Throughout all of history the creation and interaction of arbitrary rules have
shaped this world. It is this discord that hold people together and keeps the societies
evolving. Without these rules and arguments about them, people would not be ably to
function together very well, and the societies they use for support would fail.
   I realize that all rules are simple restriction placed on individuals, so they cannot
experience the full extent of their abilities. I also know that rules are baseless and
arbitrary in any absolute sort of way. These rules only serve to create friction and escalate
violence, but that is the very basis of life on this world. Rules also separate people from
their environment, in which no other creatures follow arbitrary rules, save possibly higher
primates. People here will disagree of course, believing that ants and other simple
creatures apparently follow rules. This kind of thinking is typical of these order seeking
people, who fail to realize that each ant is doing its own thing according to its own
chemical processes, not under the rules of a higher ant. Since they are inclined to be
orderly and their lives depend on societies, which thrive off of friction, they tend to act in
mechanical ways.
   If we want these people to stop being so serious and start acting individually
without having to follow rules imposed on them, I propose that we create a subclass
which doesn't have any rules and realizes that rules have no basis in objective reality.
Religions seem to be the fastest spreading belief systems, so I propose that we start a
religion where the creator is the exact opposite of the Judeo-Christian deity who is
currently predominate. If we can get people to believe in a deity which is unstable,
unpredictable and completely of the natural world, it will contradict the stable, rule
crazed, supernatural God that is popular at this time period. (We should make this deity
female for good measure, I suggest Discordia from Roman myth). We should point out
all the unruly occurrences in nature and suggest that the nature only appears orderly from
certain perspectives. For example, the ants appear orderly yet on an individual level act
disorderly. I think that people, who identify with these ideas, will see the world as
disorderly, and will realize that the rules they follow in everyday life restrict them from
their true nature. After reading more closely one will realize that order seems to exist in
reality, but so does disorder. They will also realize that neither principle really exist at all,
rather, perspective dictates perception of order and disorder. From this point people will be free to make laws and ignore them if they like. If other people do not agree with their laws they will understand and allow them to disagree. Individuals become free to choose what they would like to do from all possible actions. No longer restricted by rules of how people should behave, being human is no longer a criminal offence.
You Figure It Out
   Much unlike the seven who entered unharmed, the five whom divided by the
remainder have left the scene under water. The next time we have Flamingos of gold,
lumbering out of lemonade stands, the walrus will get it. Furthermore, we of the nine, do
not appreciate the yodeling mimes driving golf ball into our fruitcakes. Now then, the
hour has struck and the momentum is quite large, So let's all send in those taco salads.
Never-mind the four, they are on vacation, and must be disturbed by apple wielding salt
lickers. The two are the ends to which no means are possible. Lets all give three cheers
for three, and then one for each. The six, which arise from this, must be imprisoned in a
box of hedgehogs, for a week. Now that that is out of the way, the next remark will be
most serious, and important.



The End.
   In the End was the beginning. In the beginning...? Who knows, there hasn't even been an
end yet, so the beginning hasn't happened yet. Before we go about describing what
happened at the beginning we had best wait until it occurs. Since, the beginning hasn't
happened yet, then the present can't be happening now. So nothing I just wrote has
happened yet, not until after it ends, and can therefore begin, to start with. Having not
actually begun yet, this text can not have an end, that is until it begins, which will be
directly after it ends, which it can't do, having not begun yet.

[Messier Undertree]

  Hey froclown, do you know what happed? Oh, by the way, this is nothing to do with
  this thread. I went to Yoshinoya the other day. YOSHINOYA! And there were
  so crowded and I couldn’t even find a place to sit. Then, I found the
  advertising saying “150 yen off!.” My goodness! How come you are all coming,
  and sitting at Yoshinoya for just “150 yen off?” I saw a familie, like four
  of them with their kids. This guy’s saying “All right, your dad is ordering
  an extra large bowl.” What a pathetic! Hey you bastards. I can give my 150
  yen. So, just give me a break alright? Yoshinoya should be a place where
  people are fighting, like two jerks facing on each other against “U shaped
  table,” then one of them can be stubbed to death by any chance. This is how
  Yoshinoya’s suppose to. This ain’t a place for no woman and no kid. Alright,
  I finally found a place to sit. Then, the jerk next to me was ordering a
  large size with putting extra juice on it. That pissed me off once again.
  Hey jerk, we ain’t order “putting extra juice on a bowl” no more today!
  What a stupid you looked: ordering extra juice with his goofy face! Do you
  really want to eat a beef bawl with extra juice on it? I really want to ask
  you, interrogating you for an hour. Don’t you just want to say “an extra
  juice!?” As a professional Yoshinoya customer, I would rather order “extra
  scallions.” This is the coolest way. You get more scallions, and less beefs.
  This is it! It can be the best, if you put a raw egg on it. No one can beat
  this. But you have to be careful because if you order this way, the Yoshinoya
  employees gonna put you on their black lists. This can be so dangerous,
  like a risk of fighting with a double edged blade. So, I don’t recommend
  the beginners to do this... froclown, you’d rather ordering some ordinary set menu
  instead.

[Kimmy Gibbler]

When I was about nine, I had recently gotten a Nintendo Entertainment System from a garage sale down the road, the first gaming system I ever had. One game that I bought was Super Mario Brothers 3, the final chapter of the widely-acclaimed SMB trilogy, which like in the original Super Mario Brothers consisted of Mario/Luigi chasing after Princess Toadstool (whose name has since been bastardized to 'Peach'). Back on topic though; so I had advanced to World 2, "Desert Land" and I was moving along rather smoothly, in the back of my mind knowing that at some point the levels would start to get more difficult; I soon noticed a tile, one unlike the other tiles (Toad houses, numbered tiles, etc). It appeared to be some cross-hybrid of flowing diarrhea and sand, which caught my attention. I navigated my way to the tile, and hit the A button and was warped to what appeared to be a normal level; there even was a happy sunshine in the top left corner! As I side-scrolled my way through the level, the fucking sun decided to go apeshit and sodomize me repeatedly until I finally broke down in tears, throwing my controller at the ground screaming for my mom. That fucking bastard.

[Messier Undertree]

lol sage

[LMNO]

In The Beginning, when Pope Weasel and myself first formulated the idea of
collaborating on a project, we knew it would be very difficult to integrate our results.
Instead of trying to do a descent job of integration, I suggested that we just write a bunch
of random chapters, having little to do with each other, so that the whole book would be a
jumble of nonsense.

[B_M_W]

It should be said that, since these posts were of great length, and I, lacking substantial time to view this discourse, alas, I did not read them.

[Idem]

tl;dr

[Cramulus]

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[B_M_W]

lol sage

Artemisa tridentata?

[LMNO]

Oh, fuck.  I can see where this is going.

Cain?  Can we get this all into one thread?



ON E-PRIME.

I START WITH:

I'm a big fan of both e-prime and maybe logic.

to me, it's all about clarity and accuracy, to myself as well as to others.

The only problem is, it tends to make for shitty rants, and it can suck the fun out of a good joke.

I think the big problem with the "is of identity" seems not to be so much that it labels an object, but that it tends to exclude all aspects of the object that are not part of the label ("the flower 'is' red" excludes all the other aspects of flower-ness).

Also, inserting the observer as part of the observation tends to remind us that subjectivity plays a key part in most observations (and even can remind us of basic physical properties of seeing - Cf: the "Blood is blue/red" thread*).


*The thread in question reminds the reader that blood "is" not red, it <i>reflects</i> the color red, which enters your eyes and is interpreted as such, etc.

LHX:

it may be possible that e-prime still holds the trump card -


it could be said that the IS of identity has no real function anyway

since coming to this forum
i have been made aware that classifying and defining things seems to be nothing more than trifles and a cause for debate



as in
"this is a real discordian"


it always comes down to
'well - what do you mean by that'


how many different words are there for 'red'

it may be comfortable to use 'is'
but
it may also be something that is on its way out
seriously

ME:

Not on it's way out-- it has to do with the way the primate brain functions.  Labeling, categorizing-- hell, even the bible has Adam classifying things right off the bat.

humanity as a whole will probably never get over "is".  But trying to escape tends not only to be fun, but it is mildly enlightening as to how we function as humans.

Also, as Hugh will probably point out, it can be a mistake to put too much faith in simple semantic word games to lead us into bliss.  Just because you sometimes use maybe/fuzzy logic doesn't make you much better than the pinks/greys/cabbages/opiez.

LHX:

doesnt this whole thing point out that even the bible (gasp) could be subject to this fallacy?

ME:

The bible does indeed seem to be filled with this apparent fallacy (even down to YHWH's "I am that I am."). My point was that the tendency to name and classify things can be traced all the way to the creation myths. Even in our beloved Tiamat and Marduk story, we had Things (stuff that has been "is-ed") separated from chaos (undefinable; Cf: the tao that can be told is not the eternal tao, etc).

THEN JPF GETS INTO THE ACT:

JPF: To return to the original topic of conversation, EP/ML seems to gives us the best possible platform to move forward logically, but does that result in knowledge becoming a probability?

ME: Yes.  Knowledge appears to be an evolving thing, and can often be hinged upon a frame of reference of a window of time.  While I "know" that my pen will fall "down" if I drop it, there is a very small chance it won't, for various reasons.  While the percentage of that happening is infinitesimal, it still precludes my knowledge from being 100% sure.  But for me, it's close enough that I don't worry about it.  I feel that nothing can be known 100%, and that's a good thing to me.

JPF: Truth as only a possibility?... and if that's so, then wouldn't the original assumption seem a possibility?

ME: Yes.  Maybe Logic/E-Prime (ML/EP) are simply game rules that we have arbitrarily assumed. (Side note: even the phrase "original assumption" implies a less-than-100% level of assuredness to begin with).  Those that find it useful, use it.  Some have decided that, for now, it's the best set of game rules to use.  If a better one comes along, the chances are good that ML/EP will be abandoned in favor of the new rules.  ML/EP shouldn't be thought o as "the" answer, just a set of beneficial rules.

JPF: Doesn't it erode any ultimate basis for subscribing to EP/ML since probability encompasses all probabilities? 

ME: Are you trying to do a George Bernard Shaw-style paradox?  Because it's not working.

JPF: The benefit of EP/ML is only a possibility.  Why do we have greater confidence in EP/ML? 

ME: Because when using ML/EP, the level of opinion and prejudice is made more apparent.  ML/EP shows the degree of bias in the system.  This leads to greater clarity, though (of course), not 100%.

JPF: To what degree is our confidence greater in it than our confidence in other possibilities.  Using ML, what convinces us that ML is true(r)?

ME: There is no "truth" in ML/EP.  As said before, they are merely game rules.

JPF: In short can EP/ML convince us of any truth, itself included?

ME: No, because that is not its intended purpose.

Essentially, you seem to be trying to fold ML in on itself and make it implode, but ML easily encompasses itself in a very clear manner.

In addition, you seem to be saying that if we can't get to 100% truth, then its Hassan I Sabbah time: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

But that's not what ML does. You seem to be using polar thinking on ML, "true/false", where ML behaves more like, "not true/kinda true/more true than that/pretty awfully convinced that this is most likely true".

Just because probably nothing can be 100% true doesn't mean that everything is false (unless you ask a Buddhist).


JPF: As far as posssibilities are concerned, do you think that there are ways to deduce what degree of probability can be associated with any idea?

ME: So, you're looking for a mathematical equation that will give you an exact percentage? I'm not sure there's a catch-all formula, but if you really wanted to look, I'd suggest quantum physics as a start.

JPF: Does everything end up having an equal possibility of occuring or is there still a difference in possibilities?

What I mean is: your pen is dropping. There's an infinitesimal chance of it becoming a brown dwarf and a more likely chance of it hitting the ground. Can you measure that still? Can you say that hitting the ground has a greater chance of happening than brown dwarf-morph? If so, how do you measure that with ML?

ME: Remember, these are game rules, and therefore, arbitrary. Yes, you probably can measure the probability of pen-to-brown dwarf, but I don't get that picky. I just say, "not fucking likely", and carry on with my day. Not to mention, if that did happen, knowing how improbable it was will be the least of my worries.

JPF: "not true/kinda true/more true than that/pretty awfully convinced that this is most likely true"
-- Can we provide percentages or is thaat impossible?

ME: You can, if you'd like. I'm more subjective. The point is that it's not a "yes/no" dichotomy, it's a "more than/less than" evaluation.

JPF: I guess what I want to know is: if every possible scenario is still a possibility, does that mean that 100% chance (of something happening and something not happening) is divided infinitely?

ME: I don't see why not. But much like in physics, you'll get a large chunk of the 100% divided among a handful of things, and an extremely small fraction of a percent taken up by everything else.

JPF: I was asking specifically ABOUT the more/less thing and your last paragraph answered my question.

Finally.

ME: Wait, your whole point was whether or not a system of game rules that subjectively applies percentages of truth can be divided infinitely?






Wow, that was really stupid.










...And that, my friends, is how these sorts of things usually end.

[Triple Zero]

a not very well-known fact about sage is that it looks completely freaky when you invert the colours:

[AFK]

looks out of season to me. 

[Cramulus]

[B_M_W]

a not very well-known fact about sage is that it looks completely freaky when you invert the colours:

looks like a bunch of Chironomid labiums.

[LMNO]

Spontaneous symmetry breaking
Now we know that the 'forces' among the different parts of nature may have all the properties we expect to see in 'particles,' including mass, energy, momentum, and in-trinsic spin30 – more reasons to seek a new language that encompasses particles and forces in a common framework. All these entities – photons, electrons, muons, neutri-nos, pions, protons, neutrons – appear in observations at rates predicted by the probabili-ties derived from amplitude-phase pairs ("wave functions") that satisfy equations similar to Maxwell's or Schrödinger's. The symmetries we have been describing are in this sys-tem of equations, not in the wave functions that satisfy them. The wave functions, how-ever, depend on the initial conditions as well as on the equations of motion, and these in turn reflect the myriad contingencies of cosmic history. They are most decidedly un-symmetric. We cannot work backward from observations to the underlying symmetry unless we understand how it is 'broken' in the wave functions.
If each of Nature's forces were weak and independent, the spectral multiplets that reveal her symmetries would lie close together, perhaps so close as to appear as a single line. Atomic spectroscopists often use magnetic fields whose well-defined direction breaks the rotational symmetry of isolated atoms and splits some of the multiplets so they can be observed. To use the obsolete but visualizable language of Bohr orbits, the energy of the atomic electrons is no longer the same for different orientations of their orbits with respect to the applied field, the discrepancies showing up as separations of the lines within a multiplet. In the simplest case the energy splitting in the spectrum is propor-tional to the strength of the applied magnetic field that pulls on the little magnets associ-ated with the circulating electrons.31
Sometimes, however, the system can break its own symmetry spontaneously. The standard example is an assembly of many atoms in a piece of iron, each with its own magnetic moment. At high temperatures, thermal motions continually disorient the little magnets so their fields do not add up coherently and the overall magnetic field within the iron averages to zero. As the temperature is lowered this thermal disorienting effect be-comes weaker, and the mutual interactions take over and cause the atomic moments to line up all together to create an overall large magnetic field. This produces what we call a magnet, a decidedly macroscopic phenomenon. The spontaneously appearing field sin-gles out a particular direction in space, breaking the rotational symmetry for each of the atoms within the magnet and splitting their spectral lines into multiplets as described above. Of course no one can predict in which direction the spontaneous field will point. That is a matter of chance, as in the child's game of 'spin the bottle.' In the late 1950's physicists began to realize that a similar phenomenon might occur in the system of fun-damental building blocks of matter.32
Atoms and nuclei are made of stable pieces that have intrinsic mass, so a certain amount of energy has to be delivered in a small volume to produce them. They do not pop into existence out of empty space. But we know the electromagnetic field has no mass, so it is easy to excite it with arbitrarily small energies. Suppose nature possessed a massless field similar to electromagnetism, but which – unlike photons – also had a new kind of charge, somewhat like gravity, so that nearby excitations of the field would at-tract each other. What would happen? Attracting bodies lower their energy by clumping
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together, so it is energetically favorable for a self-attracting massless field to materialize spontaneously throughout space and clump to the extent the ever-present quantum pres-sure will allow. This new field would in effect condense out of the vacuum into a sub-stratum not unlike the discredited ether. Space would no longer be empty, and would no longer possess the symmetry of the bare framework of space plus time plus other internal dimensions like Schrödinger's phase or isospin space. In particular, it would not have the full symmetry of the equations of motion governing the fields. The properties of any other entities that could interact with the condensed field would be altered by it, just as the spectra of iron atoms are distorted by the spontaneously appearing magnetic field in a magnet at low temperatures.
It is an old idea that apparently empty space might contain "something" with which we interact so subtly it escapes our notice. Quantum theory now provides us with machinery by which several different kinds of stuff might exist as vacuum condensates. The Standard Model harbors two examples of this machinery, and there is tantalizing evi-dence for more. It appears that we live as quantum excitations within a vast system of condensed matter whose existence we can infer only indirectly, perhaps by melting or vaporizing small regions of the condensates within the miniscule volumes occupied by high energy collisions in our great particle accelerators, and observing the effect upon the properties of escaping radiation. Or we might use collisions to excite directly a kind of quivering motion locally in a condensate that would then decay and emit characteristic radiation. Or we might search with telescopes among the detritus of the Big Bang for some evidence of the influence of condensates on the shape and evolution of the cosmos. These are the grand ventures of contemporary science in an era whose technology pro-vides access to previously hidden realms of nature.
Now it is time to describe that part of the puzzle of matter called the 'Standard Model' that physicists have pieced together during the past century. It is not complete, and it is not as pretty as we hoped, but it hangs together and it works. I will explain fur-ther technical details as needed, but the language I have introduced in this chapter should suffice to grasp the key ideas of the Standard Model framework.