I used to go drinking with a friend, who after consuming seven or eight pints, would bring up the same question. Do we actually exist? This was usually his get out of jail card when he was failing in other arguments. He had studied philosophy and could polish his opinions with quotes from Aristotle to Wittgenstein.
I floundered for years,
instinctively believing in our existence, but unable to prove it. Then Google
came along and I was able to do some interesting research. When we next met for
a drink and the subject came up, I puffed out my chest and announced, “I think,
therefore I am”. The very fact that we were even having the debate proved that
we existed. At least, I think that’s what it meant. I tried to argue from a
scientific perspective, which became more difficult with each pint I sank.
I’m not a scientist, it should be
said. I’m an Accountant, due to an accident at birth. The accident being that I
wasn’t born into a family that could afford to send me to university. I envy
those people who dreamed of being a doctor, an actor or a scientist. There is a
bullshit idea that can be found in many self help books and motivational
videos. “If you follow your dream, one day you’ll find it’.
That might work for people with
parents who can fund you during your dream chasing phase, but it doesn’t work
for people who have to buy food and pay rent. I went down the path of getting
any job and then using the money I earned from that to pursue the interests I
have. Most of those interests turned out to be beer and curry related.
But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve
wondered what career I would have ended up in, if my parents could have
afforded it. If you look at my bookshelf you’ll see that it is dominated with
History tomes. Most of these relate to Ireland. It’s troubled relationship with
England and the origins of the Irish race in particular. I’m now in my late fifties,
so Second World War books are becoming more prevalent. I’m not sure why men of
my age become interested in that topic. Perhaps it’s a throw-back to the comics
we read as Children and the games we played in back gardens with imitation machine
guns fashioned from tree branches and where everybody inexplicably wanted to be
a German.
I’ve gotten to the age now where
I want to visit a WW2 re-enactment festival, drink real ale and count the
rivets on a replica Sherman tank to assess its authenticity.
But I notice that another subject
is slowly worming its way onto my shelves. I chose biology over physics at
school on the advice of my older brother. Like most of his advice (how to chat
up girls, source underage alcohol etc.), I now wish I’d ignored it. The world,
the universe and all that is in it is something I’d like to understand.
If I look at the science books
that I have, they lean towards physics rather than biology. One in particular
has fascinated me recently and I’d like to explore it further.
Scientists would have you believe that the
discovery of the Higgs Boson particle is on a par with the unearthing of penicillin or the first moon
landing, although the God Particle, as it is known, is unlikely to ease the
pain of venereal disease or create conspiracy theories about its dark side.
In fact, it’s not a discovery at all, more a
confirmation of what scientists already theorised, or perhaps it is just a
simple justification for all the money they spent on the large hadron collider
at a time when they should have been investing this money in the more
honourable adventure of bailing out banks.
Science is the art of studying the behaviour of
15,000 people to discover what you already know or suspected. For example, you
will never see a report on research by the University of Arkansas into
childhood obesity, which says that to their great surprise, sugar and a lack of
exercise is actually good for kids.
The major achievement of Higgs Boson appears to
be the proof that mass can be created out of nothing. Energy shares space in Einstein’s famous little
formula with mass, dangling out there on the left, like a hallucinating drug trying to get into a rave
party. Energy can also be created out of nothing. Imagine you are tired
after a hard week at work. You want to hit the sofa with a takeaway and a brain
numbing night in front of Love Island. You feel like you don’t have the energy
to make it to the toilet and contemplate fashioning a colostomy bag from the
various crisp packets that litter your sitting room.
Then a text message arrives from a friend
inviting you the pub. For the formula to work it has to be a particular friend
who makes you laugh and encourages you to have one for the road at 3am. You
will find that an instant infusion of energy results and before you know where
you are, you are skipping down the road like a Duracell battery on acid.
So if mass and energy can be created out of
nothing, then the speed of light must also be nothing. This means that the sun
doesn’t exist and this is all a dream. If somebody will give me 10 billion
Euros and a large round hole in Switzerland, I’m confident I can prove this.
And perhaps it also proves that my old drinking
buddie was right. That science can also prove that we don’t exist. But that
would also mean that history doesn’t exist and I’ve been wasting my time
reading all those books. But if we don’t exist, then this is all a simulation
and I’ve been programmed to be a history reading, blog writing Accountant. I
pity the guy who wrote that code.
