Facts

Back when I was naive, like two years ago, I believed in stuff like facts. While some aspects of the universe were unknown, we knew that Earth revolved around the sun and that time only moved forward and at a constant rate. Now, as time proceeds, I have questions.

Let’s start with the “arrow of time.” In my astronomy classes in college, I learned that time is associated with gravity and moves only forward at a constant speed, once again because of gravity. This seems a bit like a “just so” fact. Like it’s that way because that is just that way. I believe that evidence is pretty flimsy and that one day it’ll be determined to be wrong.

Gravity may indeed be the reason entropy occurs at the rate it does, and the net effect may _seem_ like the passage of time. However, that is a facet of where we are, when we are. Let’s not start thinking we’re describing absolutes here.

At various times throughout my life, I would have enthusiastically called myself an atheist. What that really meant was that I did not want to be associated with religious people, who seemed gullible and superstitious to me. If I may be candid, I have no idea what people are or how people came to be. If there were “Adam and Eve,” I have no clue how they got to Earth or why. Why are leaves green and oceans blue? No idea. I think inquiry is great, but we must remember we’re not talking in absolutes. Humans are around 5-6 feet tall. But what the fuck is a foot? Is it possible that we’re really tiny? I’d believe it. Is it possible that we’ve never seen extra terrestrial life because it’s at another scale and therefore is not detected by our imaging tools? Ya gotta figure as much. Mosquitoes seem tiny to us, but do we seem that size to other forms of life? I’d believe it.

And so, I’m going to go ahead and speculate that humans — which seem quite different from other life on Earth, I hasten to add — are possibly not anywhere near the most advanced life in the universe. They’ve got cool hair tho.