Sitting there I contemplated the following, as I often find myself doing... I thought how there is not a day that goes by that I'm not filled with speechless awe at the sublimely beautiful complexity of the universe and staggered by the knowledge that it is all comprised of around 12 unique sub atomic particles and 3 distinct forces mediated by another 4 particles (the Standard Model).
I'm amazed at how delightful complexity can arise from the bleakness of the universe's movement towards entropic stagnation.
But its not just fantastic complexity from a small number of players and rules at that level only. There are nested levels of complexity to consider as well! Each level is made up of a few simple, easy to conceptualize rules or factors, and yet, each one, with enough time - especially thanks to the random nature of the universe - leads to a seemingly limitless wonder of diversity.
At one level you have the physical particles of the standard model, and their interactions that lead to this scene. This entire tableau due to interactions played out by a dozen particles and 3 forces (and billions of years of time). A few levels up in the scale, on a biological level, evolutionairily, genetically speaking, you have about a billion years of life evolving from what is likely just a single (or small number of temporally concomitant) event(s) leading to the first metabolically active molecular confluence ('life'), and from there to all the myriad varieties of life present in this picture. All of us, all the mammals, avians, piceans, even the insects, bacteria, all us fauna, and all the flora - all of us related to one another (lets not forget fungi and the other biota either!), sharing that common origin, that first random spark of life, yet all this diversity itself, also a result of a simple rule - just one basic function, that thanks to the very same entropic chaos, events that can occur are random and over time, those random events will result in changes, and those changes over time will be shown to be more or less competitive for whatever local enviornment the changess occur within, and that from this simple pressure - which we call evolution - all life's diversity comes into existence.
I know I'll die all too soon, but while I am a sentient self aware creature - the awe I feel that time, random chance, 3 phsyical forces, and a dozen particles - can result in all of this is immeasurable.
It is sad to think that there are many people who think this is all fabricated by some perfect invisible ghostly being, not a natural wonder that is governed by simple to understand rules yet resulting in such wild and wondrous diversity, but just a mundane construct assembled by a being (or beings) with infinite knowledge, infinite energy/power, and infinite resources. Theists claim to be in awe of the universe as well (calling it 'all of creation') but while I can be in awe of a human made wonder like the Hoover dam, still that pales in comparison to the evolution of this beautiful universe thanks to simple rules and particles. Given the time, money, people and resources - I could build the Hoover dam.. and given infinite power, energy, resources, and knowledge, just about any modern human could build a better running, more efficient universe. But - that this universe, flawed as it is, yet utterly beautiful and breathtakingly magnificent developed in a way we humans can understand, made up of such a limited number of simple rules - that it just more profound than any blog post of words could possibly capture.
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