Speaking to the Future

Following was an excerpt of a proposed marking on a underground nuclear waste disposal facility. Not sure if it was adopted in this form, but it is interesting to see the form in which we decided to speak to our future successors.

These standing stones mark an area used to bury

radioactive wastes. The area is ... by ...

Kilometers (or ... miles or about ... times

the height of an average full grown male person)

and the buried waste is ... kilometers

down. This place was chosen to put this

dangerous material far away from people. The

rock and water in this area may not look, feel,

or smell, unusual but may be poisoned by

radioactive wastes. When radioactive matter

decays, it gives off invisible energy that can

destroy or damage people, animals, and

plants.

Do not drill here. Do not dig here. Do not do

anything that will change the rocks or water in

the area.

Do not destroy this marker. This marking

system has been designed to last 10,000 years.

If the marker is difficult to read, add new

markers in longer-lasting materials in

languages that you speak. For more information

go to the building further inside. The site

was known as the WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot

Plant) site when it was closed in ....

Languages that we know, in the form we know may disappear with time, and future people may be curious and enthusiastic like us to explore buried objects. So, the problem how should a set of symbols be designed that convey a message that the site, though it looks clean on the top and everywhere around it, inside it has the most dangerous invisible energy. United states government constituted about 6 different expert groups to study the problem and suggest solutions.
We may think that language independent symbols like the danger sign, stop sign, arrow that convey meaning irrespective of the language spoken, would convey the meaning better than a particular language which may go out of use. Many languages and their scripts, like Sumerian, akkadian, elamite, harappan that existed 5000 years ago went out of use and forgotten without any major cultural discontinuity. So, there is no guarantee that people 10000 years(the approximate age till which the waste would remain hazardous) from now would still speak or understand our language.

But, the expert committees in fact suggested language independent symbols give no more guarantee than a particular language, that they will convey intended meaning. It is even possible people in the future may interpret them to mean the opposite of of what we intended. It is also possible, sensing no danger around the waste containers themselves, they may tend to ignore our signs and may try to extract a different meaning than what we intended. So, it seems plain text is the more reliable way of communicating to our future than the language independent symbols like nuclear trefoil. They thought there will always be humans trying to decipher old texts, and curious human beings trying to understand the meaning of cryptic words like our archaeologists.

Mind

What makes me Me? If my brain gets damaged and no longer functions, but my organs continue to function, am I still considered to be Me. Every moment of my existence, I feel myself being inside my brain. If there is no brain, can I be Me? The organs may still be able to coordinate enough to continue the survival of the body as a whole, but does it mean I exist, if there is no brain?
Brain, with its 2% weight, often consumes > 20% of the body's energy. Brain indeed is the place when stuff we feel, happens. Before the legs start to run, before the mouth opens to eat, it is the brain that decides. If there is no brain, if I cannot feel myself inside my head, can I exist? If my hand still functions well, but no longer listens to my brain, can feel it to be mine?

Most of what we feel as ourselves is what happens inside the brain, designed and projected by brain at its will. If body is a state with organs as citizens, then its political organization is a monarchy with brain as the reigning god dictating to other subjects what is good, what to do, when to act, and projecting himself as the sole entity representing the whole State. My pain is the pain that my brain tissue feels. Other organs may be in a bad state, may get damaged, but as long as brain is intact, I can feel both sadness and happiness unhindered.

When I sleep, brain creates a play ground for itself, in dreams. Dream is a close cousin of Thought. Dreams have haunted us since time immemorial. Some say, they are the reason why people started imagining an omnipresent entity as god. If I can see the same world when I sleep, when my eyes are closed, if there are two worlds one when I am awake and one when I am asleep, what is real what is unreal? How can I continue to believe that one is real while the other is unreal? Am I awake or am I asleep?

If men were to have an invisible soul driving them, it must be inside the brain.

Entropy

Entropy is like energy, which we can feel, but is difficult to explain what exactly it is. Originally introduced as a limitation on the ability of a machine to convert one form of energy into another form, now it is at the heart of modern communications and information processing. In a crude way, Entropy is that quantity that denotes complexity in a system. There is no exact definition of what kind of complexity it refers to. But we can almost feel when we look at a system. A system with 3 objects is more complex than a system with 2 objects. A moving object has more complexity that a similar stationary object. A is more complex than L. 23 is more complex than 2. Entropy refers to this unexplainable complexity which our mind can perceive. It may be one of those apriori cognitions that the mind is born with.

If universe is a big computer as is believed by many, Entropy is the quantity that changes as the computer computes.