Monday, November 24, 2003

   Tangents, World Records, Pi and Reality
This is what you get for working somewhere where you don't have to be focussing on the job in order to do it: lots of time to think. Some thoughts are entertaining, some are challenging. Today I had one of each:

Tangents

This is related to a conversation I had with Sara the other day. Eventually we got onto the subject of tangents. Ie. drifintg away from the subject of a conversation. However we also mentioned the mathematical kind.

Well

I was thinking about it today, and decided that the word "tangent" to describe a drift away from conversation is mathematically incorrect. See if you can follow my reasoning:

The fundamental attribute of a circle is that it is in constant acceleration towards it's centre. The easiest way to think of it is a bullet travelling around the earth at speed enough to never lose altitude. It is always accelerating towards the earth's centre, as is the affect of gravity, and thus it travels around in circles.

Now, if the bullet were to go off on a tangent, it would stop accelerating and simply keep going the way it was last going, in a straight line.

I'd like to take a moment to show my carefully prepared diagram on the matter:



Conversational tangents, however, go a completely different way from the way they were going.

That, and I'd be quite disturbed if my conversation was comparable with a circle- ever repeating itself. No. I propose a new model.



The flow of the conversation is more realistic. It generally goes all over the places, however, it always gets there gradually. The conversation travels along a random route, reaching certain topics but generally spending a lot of time in between topics.

A "tangent" is characterised by a leap in the conversation to a certain topic without any actual movement towards it. This often confuses others in the conversation, who are prone to ask "where did that come from?".

Hence due to the leap-like nature of the conversation I propose that "Tangents" shall be renamed "Conversational leaps". I'm already forwarding my request to all major dictionaries, linguists and mathematicians as you read this.

Remeber: Vote NO for Tangents, and YES for convo leaps!!






And with the silliness over, onto the serious stuff

World Records, Pi and Reality

A random series of thoughts went through my mind at work today, all initiated by one of my workmates telling someone this:

"The world record for the number of melons broken by headbutting in a minute is 16".

This led me to thinking about world records.

I recalled that one particular world record is the number of digits to which Pi has been calculated.

This led me to think about numbers.

I began to think "why is Pi, the exact number that it is?". Then I began to think "what if it wasn't".

Then I began to think "what if we lived in a universe where 2+2 actually was 5?..

It's unfathomable to us, but the thing is, it's perfectly possible that the universe could have been structured in such a way that mathematics works that way.

What if we lived in a universe where the laws of science were completely different, and had different constants?

Bear in mind that this universe, from an atheistic point of view, is merely a probability. When the "big bang" took place, beforehand, the laws of physics would have worked in all sorts of weird ways we can't even begin to comprehend.

The very manifestation of the universe in the Big Bang (speaking from an atheistic, scientific point of view) is the determining factor in how the physical laws turn out to be- they could have been like anything, but they just happened to turn out like this.

So, what really is reality if it could have turned out so many different ways? And what really do we know? The truth is we don't. Even the most intellectual among us is dumb in the proper perspective.

How can we even begin going to answer questions like "is there a God", "why is the universe here?", "what is our nature?" and "where do our feelings come from?" with such a feeble understanding of the universe?

And yet some of the "brains" of the planet like to believe that they have answered all four of those questions: "No", "The Big Bang", "Animal", and "Chemicals" respectively. But how can we really be sure? Science as a pure, atheistic tool can not answer these questions but only give technicalities:

Looking at the universe as it is now, technically God need not exist in order to keep it going.

Looking at the current state of the universe, it looks as though it all started from nothing, billions of years ago.

Judging by certain things we know about biology, we appear to be on the same level as animals.

Looking at chemicals in the brain interact, indicates that there is a certain chemical associated with a certain emotion or feeling.

I'm not writing this primarily to discredit anything which science says- but to challenge your views on it. Science is not a be-all and end-all.

God may not appear to be required to have created the universe or to keep it going, but it doesn't mean he isn't there.

The Big Bang may have been the start of the universe, but it isn't necessarily it's reason for existence.

We may be built in the same way as animals, but it doesn't mean we are not different from them in any more than an intellectual sense.

Love may be associated by chemicals, but that doesn't mean love is a chemical interaction.

With every thing you look at in the physical, bear in mind that there is so much more that could be behind it. In a universe that could have ended up as any of an infinite number of possibilities, even if you know everything there is to know, you know nothing.

Don't rely on intellect. The intelligence of some people is their downfall, for it blinds them from the truth that they are nothing but a weak, feeble, stupid little being. But those who recognise this fact and use it to grow will gain the most valuable attribute of all- wisdom.
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