4238/Of Physics and Philosophy

Of Physics and Philosophy
Date of Scene:	21 June 2016
Location:	Njorun Station - Ring of Philosophy
Synopsis:	What happens when you mix science and spirituality? Xiaomu, Staren, and Sigrun find out.
Cast of Characters:	Staren, 707, 992

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Xiaomu (707) has posed:
For many worlds, Unification is something of a mixed blessing. Language barriers are weakened or punched through, things believed imaginary or impossible turn out to be very real, and that's not even getting into those unfortunate realities which find themselves embroiled in the conflict between the Union and the Confederacy.

Xiaomu considers herself lucky, though: she's fluent in a few languages already, her day job has been dealing with supposed-fantastical beings for any number of years now (not to mention that she *is* one to most people), and while the war is a hassle, she's also been able to take advantage of anime, games, movies, etc. from outside of her own world's bodies of work, which makes it all worth it to her.

In fact, she was just out shopping when the conversation on the Union's chat band wandered across the subject of particle physics and how they work, and she chimed in with an off-the-cuff comment that nearly got somebody in trouble. So - having stopped off to get a box of inarizushi (to tide her over until she gets home for dinner) - the sage fox finds an open instance of the Ring of Philosophy, and invites Staren over to chat. She wouldn't be surprised if anyone besides Staren turns up, either.

Staren has posed:
    Staren walks in, soon enough. He offers a wave. "Oh hey." He takes a seat nearby. "So, are you a zen master, ready to set me straight on things?"

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
Xiaomu waves to Staren, grinning. "Buddhist yes, but not Zen," she says good-naturedly. "Besides, the mark of a Zen master isn't that he sets anyone straight; he gives his pupils a compass and tells them when they're reading it wrong. Have a seat and some inarizushi?" She indicates the box sitting in front of her; eleven pouches of inarizushi rest within it, plus an empty space the right size to have held an additional pouch.

"Anyway, I think it was quantum physics I meant more than discrete particle physics, but ... more than that, I wasn't trying to dismiss what you were saying. The conversation at the time was trying to get a better grasp on a magically-oriented world's underlying metaphysics, right? And how that translates into what you'd consider 'observable phenomena'?"

Staren has posed:
    Staren was smiling, but he gives a dismissive 'hrmh.' grunt as she describes a zen master's job. "Some what?" he looks at the pouch curiously.

    "Umm... the discussion waaaaaas..." He's obviously checking his headcomputer for several seconds.

    "Right. The curiousity of Sigrun's world being mirrored, and to what extent that applied. I had just discarded the idea that even her proteins and DNA are of reverse chirality, but then it occured to me, that perhaps spirits play a part in the digestive and metabolic processes, so it might well be that she can eat food from normal-chirality worlds and the spirits turn it into something she can use? Hard to say. I'm not sure if there's any upshot just yet -- this is just musing. It'll have meaning when there's a practical problem to solve, for which it is relevant. Actually now it makes me wonder, does her world spin around the other way too? If it spins the /same/ way, wouldn't that change the weather patterns? Hmmm..." he holds a finger to his chin.

Sigrun Stem (992) has posed:
"They're interesting questions, certainly." Sigrun responds to staren as she comes in. She doesn't have the cane today, but her codex gem is still missing. Having learned the basics of how this special place works, she summons herself a comfy floating desk chair and leans back in it.

"I can't say I know anything about chirality or the like. As I told you, I'm a Mage, not a Wizard." She looks towards Xiaomu at this point, "I am Sigrun Stem, as I'm sure you figured out." She removes her mask, revealing a face that aside from the battle scars would be described by most people as 'conventionally attractive.' "Nice to meet you."

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
Xiaomu waves to Sigrun, "I was starting to come to that conclusion, but thanks for clinching it. Name's Xiaomu, I'm an agent of Shinra in my homeworld, and I work with Psyber's 'Heaven Or Hell' group as a Union member. Plus getting into unrelated scrapes now and again."

She leans forward briefly, nudging the box of inarizushi towards Sigrun. "Have some inarizushi? ... Not that I was figuring on testing any of Staren's theories," she adds with a wry grin. "Anyway, good to meet you too, Sigrun."

She sits back again, having claimed a piece of inarizushi herself while she was at it, and looking at Staren again. "So check me on a thing: what happens if you run across a problem that you don't understand well enough to solve? Do you just keep beating your head against it until something makes sense? Do you ever admit that something is beyond your understanding and likely to stay that way?"

Staren has posed:
    "'Wizards' sound a lot like 'scientists'." Staren observes. He chuckles as Xiaomu comments on testing the protein chirality theory.

    He looks at the fox for a moment, thinkjing over his reply. "I come at it from another angle with what I /can/ do, if I think it's important enough to. Like, if maybe, I'm fighting a bad guy, and if I knew all the right things to say, I could talk them down, but I don't? I fight them and stop them. And maybe there'll be collateral damage, and killing them isn't as great as making a new friend, but it's better than doing nothing. If the problem is just stupid and frustrating to deal with, and there's other elites to handle it, I'll let them do it, like that shroud business. But if I was the only one there? I dunno, I mighta gone to more extensive lengths to save them whether they liked it or not. I mean, their kids were getting sick. On the other hand, if I fix /every/ group that's having problems, I'd be seen as a villain and get heroes on my ass, so, I guess it's a calculation of how much I think other elites are gonna come after me for it. I can do more good in the long run if I'm not fighting off heroes or getting killed by them like some villain, right?"

    "...Anyway, what does this have to do with zen?"

Sigrun Stem (992) has posed:
"Maybe so, Wizards are interested in understanding the unknown. Mages like me are more interested in what this knowledge can be used for." Sigrun is essentially talking about mages being somewhat akin to engineers. "I won't turn down food."

She picks up a piece with her gloved hand and plops it into her mouth, she's clearly not used to this particular variety of food, but she seems to find it perfectly acceptable. "What's Heaven or Hell, exactly?" She asks with naked curiousity, "I'm sure I could look it up, but I don't have my codex gem with me so it's inconvenient right now."

Staren's answer seems to cause a mildly confused frown, "Staren, the only reason I can see people on our side go after you for trying to help people is if the methods you're using wouldn't pass the ethics committee, so what are 'more extensive lengths'?"

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
"Like I said," Xiaomu says to Staren, "I'm not a *Zen* Buddhist. I'm not even sure if the sect I studied with is still around in China, let alone Japan. But one of the few things all branches of Buddhism have in common is the search for Nirvana, the ongoing endeavor to free one's soul from the cycle of rebirth. Zen does that through, among other things, trying to attain a form of enlightenment of the mind, not just the soul. You mentioned koans, right? Those aren't just meaningless riddles or pointless paradoxes; a proper koan conveys a deeper meaning, but you have to work to understand it - and in so doing, break free of the preconceptions that anchor you to the cycle of mortality."

She pauses, munching on a bite of inarizushi; after she swallows, she finishes, "... or something like that. 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?' is one of the standards; you may think that a single hand can't clap, or can only fan the air, but contemplating it at length can lead to realizing that there are other answers. I don't think there *are* koans that have only one answer."

She looks at Sigrun. "Heaven Or Hell is ... pretty much a paranormal and supernatural investigations team. It's been a while since Psyber mobilized the group for a specific mission, but I'm fairly sure helping save Priscilla's world wound up as a largely Heaven Or Hell operation?" She looks at Staren; he was part of that whole situation, so he can probably help confirm (or refute) her half-guess on that subject.

Staren has posed:
    "So, scientists and engineers. I've always leaned more towards the mage side myself, but I have a certain wizardly curiousity all the same. Hard to tell if it's because I'm just curious, or the 'mage' side of me knows the knowledge has a chance of bearing useful fruit?" He shrugs.

    Staren listens to Xiaomu's explanation. "Yeah yeah. No problem with Buddhism. Well, I do, but not as severe of one and it's a whole other discussion. Um, and yes, they /are/ meaningless riddles. That's the point. Umm... you're backing this up with your admittance that there is no actual correct, enlightening answer to the riddle. So it doesn't teach shit, except that people like to be clever-sounding cryptic mystic jerks."

    He looks back to Sigrun. "I was talking about an incident where some nature-loving folk who lived in a forest... well, they all worshipped the forest god, right? Only it went mad or sick or something, stopped talking to them, and choked the forest with ash and flame."

    Staren shakes his head. "But these idiots, they refused to raise a hand against this god of theirs. And when I gave them help? Set up battery-powered air filters for their homes? They /refused to even change batteries or filters/, because touching technology was bad according to their god. You know, the same god now cooking and choking them?! And I mean, sure, people are free to make dumb decisions, right, that's what freedom means."

    "But this village had /children/. Children who risked being plagued by lung disease for the rest of their life because of their idiot parents at BEST, or who might perish in fire if their god rampaged in the wrong direction!"

    "Now, there were some other heroes around, so I let them handle it because I couldn't stand talking to these self-destructive morons one more frigging second. But if those heroes hadn't been around? I dunno, maybe I coulda killed the god. Forest wouldn't have been a good place to live anymore though. Maybe I could build some kinda dome around them and get enough tech together to keep it running. Either of those are going against all their wishes and destroying their way of life -- well, no, not really, their god already /did/ that, see, but I'd be not respecting their wishes."

    "Alternatively, I could leave them to their fate and just abduct their children and try to find homes for them. But trust me, if someone came along then and talked to these people later, what light do you think these people would paint me in for /caring about their fucking children/ more than /they/ did? Not a good one."

    Staren shakes his head. "Nah. People don't want to /actually/ fix stuff. I mean, look around you. People are growing old and dying ALL THE TIME. It's a freakin' tragedy! Millions! Billions! Gazillions, bigger numbers than you can ever CONCEIVE of, are dying, every moment, somewhere in the multiverse, leaving bereaved loved ones behind."

    He begins to get increasingly angry and ranty, "And yet, everyone's been cultureally... ugh, somehow people are TWISTED into thinking death is NECESSARY and not just some cosmic bad luck happenstance that happens to some species and not others because of flimsy biology! But if I rounded people up and put people in computers where they'd never die, how would people see that? I'd be smashed by an alliance of dozens of heroes by the time I barely got started! And then the irony would be that they'd probably run around smashing the computers too, killing the few people I saved anyway!"

    He sighs. "Anyway, we're not here to talk about my complete inability to actually save the people of the Multiverse, we were here to make sure that I properly understand Zen and am judging it on its full merits rather than condemning some stawman."

    He looks back to Xiaomu. "So far, I'm unimpressed, but maybe there's arguments yet to be made with more definitive merit?" He's trying not to look as scornful as he could, with mixed success. But on some level, he's honestly hoping he's wrong, because it would be socially mega-awkward to go to all the troubl

Staren has posed:
He's trying not to look as scornful as he could, with mixed success. But on some level, he's honestly hoping he's wrong, because it would be socially mega-awkward to go to all the trouble of having this talk with Xiaomu only for it to confirm his previous beliefs

Sigrun Stem (992) has posed:
Sigrun listens to Staren's rant with a somewhat concerned look. "That's a sticky situation." She agrees, softly, "And I know not what I'd do if I could not call in experts, but I fear I'd do something wrong, even if that wrong is nothing at all."

The monster exterminator also listens to Xiaomu, and Staren, and takes a moment to form her own take on the matter, trying to see if she understands what Xiaomu is saying. "It sounds to me like the point of the question is not the answer. It's how thinking about the question enriches your thinking. Like... it's all good and well to know that for a square triangle straight sides of three and four the hypotenusa is five, but what's the point in knowing that if you don't know how to get there?"

Building on that, she adds, "If the questions are meant to engage the mind and encourage a new way to think about something, perhaps the answer doesn't even matter."

Staren has posed:
    Staren looks at Sigrun. "That's different. The Pythagorean formula is a specific formula. How long is one side of a triangle given the other two sides has only one right answer."

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
It's not every day that Xiaomu gets to meet a potential mad scientist ... although Staren seems to know enough about that genre to keep himself from sliding all the way into that sort of madness. So 'potential' remains the critical word, and even if she takes some issue with his disregard for Buddhism, she can't fault him for *having* problems with it - at least in his current mindset.

The bigger problems - and the problems with which Xiaomu sympathizes even more - is the specific example of a forest god whose followers kept placing their faith in that same deity, even at the cost of their own lives. And that's where the sage fox just goes quiet for a while, letting Sigrun chip into the conversation.

"I think, in a case like the one you just described," she finally says, "what you needed to do was try and help the god. Find the source of the illness - pollution or rot or just a big chunk of ill will, whatever - and treat the problem at its source. Not entirely unlike doing surgery."

Xiaomu takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "That's the thing, Staren. You focused on 'help the people,' right? Which isn't *wrong* per se, not in its own right. But if the people are too devoted to the way of life their god taught them to turn aside from that devotion, there's only so much you can do. And sometimes, there's nothing. Mortal or immortal, we all have limits to what we can do. And mortals like you -"

The smile which curves Xiaomu's lips has a touch of affection in it; maybe not for Staren specifically, but for the group he represents. "Mortals like you are so good at finding ways to stretch or bend your limits. You can *create*, which is something even I have a slippery time with."

Sigrun Stem (992) has posed:
"And in mathematics there's always at least one correct answer even if that's just 'we can't know', but the real world isn't so clean, and being able to think about a problem through multiple channels, and knowing just how to think about it? That has value." Sigrun suggests to Staren, glancing back to Xiaomu as she offers another solution to the problem Staren mentioned.

"I don't know if the methods of Zen are good at getting you to practice thinking about problems in new ways, but real life problems are often messy, and I approve of all methods that try to get you to be better about thinking of these things." Sigrun shrugs, "And maybe the packaging is a little specific and unusual. It doesn't have to work for you to have merit, does it?"

Staren has posed:
    Staren blinks at Xiaomu. "Yeah... okay, actually, treating the god like a patient is something I suggested at the time. But people were having none of that. Like, it'd be, demeaning to the god somehow, to treat it like a sick person or a wounded animal. The people refused to allow for such in their reverence. Only choice allowed was, I dunno, something about talking to it and subduing elementals? While the people suffered the whole time. Other heroes wanted to do that, so I let them and stayed out of it."

    Staren shrugs. "That's true. Those people made their choice. But again, there were kids there. Kids who never /got/ to make a choice. Only had the circumstances under which they were born."

    Sigrun's advice causes a look on his face like bad-tasting food. "Ehhhhhnh... I suppose it might happen to help some people by coincidence, but it's not really designed for that. Maybe you can teach engineering -- magery -- by saying 'Here's the situation, find any solution that works' but it seems super sloppy for philosophy, because it's a lot less empirical to even judge what /is/ a right answer. In engineering either it works or it doesn't. When it comes to whether your clever twisting of 'one hand clapping' into something sensible-sounding is valid.... eeeenh."

Staren has posed:
    Staren snaps his fingers. "It's like when people ruin a great story by saying the author meant a bunch of crazy stuff by it, and the author's not there to refute it, and it's pretty unlikely they meant /every/ crazy thing you ascribe to them. It's sloppy, there's no way to judge right or wrong, just a set-up to let a bunch of people get pretentious /because/ they can't be proven wrong in their own field. Yeah, that's pretty much exactly the vibe I get from every 'clever' zen koan I read, now that I think of it..."

Sigrun Stem (992) has posed:
Sigrun shrugs slightly, "Xiaomu said it's part of a framework, a framework in which you're supposed to have a teacher to guide you if you're going nowhere. I'm not sure it's a good framework mind, because I have no experience with it, but I had philosophy classes in college. A lot of that boiled down to 'interesting question' and then discussing the question and thinking about what the answer may be and all too often the answer we ended up giving wasn't important, as long as the road we took to get there was sensible."

For the last bit, Sigrun adds another bit, "I assume the cryptic phrasing has its purpose within that larger framework, and that outside the framework, those 'koans' lose their usefulness. Just like a lot of traditional Eastern--I guess you'd know it as Western--philosophy includes a lot of assumptions about how the world works without which the questions asked in that tradition lose meaning. Is it the asker's fault if it the question was never directed at someone who lacks the background that informs and contextualizes the question?"

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
"Somebody who takes advantage of their understanding of Zen to lord it over others is doing it wrong," Xiaomu states, wrinkling her nose briefly. "Even *I* know that much. You don't flaunt your enlightenment in the face of the unenlightened, that's bad manners and it undoes all of your hard work, *and* whatever progress they might have been making. But I mentioned Zen less because of enlightenment - remember, *I* am not a Zen Buddhist - and more because quantum physics."

She looks at Staren. "I dunno how much of your work has been in quantum theory, but ... isn't a lot of that counter-intuitive? Goes against what's been established in more conventional fields of physics? Stuff like two particles that got split apart from each other and have nothing else connecting them can still affect each other? Or how a different particle could resolve into either of two states when you next try to observe it? That's what so-called 'Western' scientists have been coming up with ... and some things about that have made a lot of sense to great Asian thinkers, who come at it from their cultural mindset - accepting that mysteries exist, I guess you'd call it - instead of the 'everything can be quantified, and everything can be explained' headspace of Western science."

Staren has posed:
    Staren looks from Sigrun to Xiaomu. "I've studied quantum mechanics some, but it hasn't really come up in my work." He rolls his eyes. "And yes, it /is/ counter-intuitive, but it helps to hear it explained conceptually instead of just looking at a bunch of formulas. As for 'spooky action at a distance', quantum mechanics /does not work that way/. That's like story-writers thinking that lightning or radioactivity can do anything. Quantum entanglement doesn't mean what people think it means. Well. Except in worlds where it /does/ work that way, I suppose."

    Staren sighs. "But don't you see the contradiction? The point isn't that mysteries exist -- it's that mysteries are just knowledge waiting to happen, and even when shit is /really weird/, like quantum mechanics, it can /still/ be understood by scientist-wizards. You know what my honest guess is? That particle physicists who also study zen just want to feel better about their own incomplete understanding or want to glorify mystery, which is something a scientist /shouldn't/ be doing, but is allowed in worlds where 'being a scientist' means 'writing papers' rather than 'figuring shit out'."

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
"And Buddhism isn't for everyone," Xiaomu admits. "You have to want that kind of enlightenment, or it never *will* sound like anything more than pretentious mumbo-jumbo. Nothing good has ever been accomplished by trying to force anyone to take up religious beliefs that they aren't willing to agree with."

She glances away briefly, her vulpine ears flicking. "Or spiritual beliefs of any sort, religious or not. Raise a community on tales of how foxes are conniving vermin out to bewitch them and steal their children for supper, and you'll be lucky to have an actual fox walk into town in the next two centuries and not get hunted down to stretch her pelt over a smoldering fire ..." Her ears angle back more sharply, and the look on her face becomes somewhat more angry - or perhaps, more pained.

"... anyway. If I'd been trying to convince you of anything, Staren, this is about the point where I would give up. Whatever form *your* enlightenment takes, I hope it's one that lets you keep a mind open to where other people see or hear the truths that speak to them." She takes another piece of inarizushi from the box, not looking at either Staren or Sigrun at this point. "If every mortal could agree on one great Truth, you wouldn't have dozens of religions and denominations all butting heads with each other, that's for sure."

Staren has posed:
    Staren shrugs. "Perhaps Zen can help some people. But it sounds to me like the great truth of Zen is that there /is/ no great truth of Zen, it's just a thing to help people find other great truths. And I say... why not just give them that great truth, then? At the very least, Zen needs to come with a disclaimer: 'Not for everyone. If it sounds stupid to you, then it's not for you. It is a teaching tool and everyone learns differently.'"

    He stretches out. "It sounds like we all have some baggage that never quite goes away. Sucky stuff in our pasts. I guess that's just part of being a person."

    "...I have to wonder though... You go out there and you fight. Aren't buddhists pacifists? And isn't the whole point of buddhism learning to accept that the world is the way it is, and all unhappiness comes from silly mortal desires to change it? I thought nirvana was like... the idea that when you finally accept that nothing should matter to you, then nothing matters anymore, so there's nothing more to do."

Sigrun Stem (992) has posed:
"I don't know much about the specifics of Buddhism, but well..." Sigrun half-shrugs. "I seem to recall reading about warrior-monks in Japan, and I'm pretty sure those were Buddhists." The rest of it, she doesn't really have anything else to say about it beyond, "Nobody is asking you to become a Buddhist, just to respect the people who are."

Xiaomu (707) has posed:
"That disclaimer should go on every religion and every school of philosophy out there," Xiaomu says with a wry grin. "Every single one. And as for whether Buddhists are pacifists ..." She trails off briefly. "The theory is to not harm any other living soul, because all souls are supposedly seeking enlightenment through rebirth. The ant that you step on, or the steer whose meat went into that hamburger, or the chicken that was fried for your lunch; any of them could have been a soul that was human the last time around. But by the same token, there's this category of spirit-beings ... dharmapala, 'protectors of dharma' - Fudou Myou-ou, the Immovable King of Light, is one of the better-known dharmapala. Basically, if you piss off one of the Buddhist deities, the ass-kicking with your name on it is gonna come from a dharmapala."

Xiaomu smirks briefly. "Or something to that effect. I didn't say I was a good Buddhist."

Staren has posed:
    Staren smiles a little. "I see. I suppose, in the end, what matters is that you're clear on what seems like the right thing to you. It doesn't have to have some fancy name or completely match a bunch of other ideas that are in a bag together with a fancy name." He stands up, taking one of the boxes of japanese food that the player still has no idea what it is. "Thanks for the talk, and thanks for the inu-whatever. I'm glad we could make sure this didn't turn into like, some kind of festering rift between us."