I’m getting the feeling that the more I know, the less it matters to know anything. Physics is a game, a game at which I’m fairly decent, and it’s something to bide the time while I try to enjoy other facets of life that seem more firmly rooted in my consciousness, like spending time with Kendra or making new friends (something that makes me overly nervous). It is a game played with meaningless marks on paper, as Hilbert said, and I begrudge him none. I used to be a firm scientific realist, the nemesis of the school of Niels Bohr, but now it seems to be washing away in the sand. Electrons may be real, but they are certainly no more real than the sensation of the keys against my fingers on the keyboard, which I hold to be fairly dubious. I’ve become somewhat of a hyper-Platonist in that I disparage things of this world, which seem designed to trick, to deceive, to swindle until there is no treasure left to be gotten from the spirit. I wish I didn’t have to eat, as food is one more potency that bonds you to the earth and keeps you from God.
So I do science. I do science because otherwise, ennui would be the theme of the day and I don’t want that in the least. I play a game, and I am fascinated with the idea that people with lots of money are willing to give me some of theirs so I can play the game with them. But the stakes are higher in this game; to make a mistake is to not get invited back to play again. So I believe in electrons; but I believe more in the neutrinos that are associated with them, only because they oscillate and do the things they shouldn’t, thereby pissing off the rationalists and objectivists that are oh-so-easy to tease.
