I’m feeling particularly restricted today. Perhaps it’s because I’m wearing a tie. I don’t like ties, so any situation in which I have no choice but to wear one automatically grates on my nerves. Don’t ask me why. Perhaps I was an irate Chihuahua in my last life that had been tied up too long. I really don’t care right now, either. Its 2:45 in the afternoon, I’m at work, I’m dead tired, and there’s no chance that I’ll get to leave for a couple of hours yet. You can see how this frame of mind would develop, yes?
Imagine life without restrictions – as in, all restrictions, of every possibly type. Like there was no gravity. No limit to what you could think of and create. Or perhaps just the thought of something would cause it to be created. I want a chocolate ice cream. Damn. Not working yet. Hmm, perhaps this idea needs a little bit of refining (I want an oil refinery. Hmm, no, that didn’t work either).
Human beings love restrictions. It’s only after you’ve suffered through eight hours of work on three hours of sleep that you truly realize the value of leisure. In the same way, you have to deny yourself something to give meaning to something else. In fact, this idea is so pervasive, it’s even influenced science. Consider, for a bit. Most scientific theories you would have read (unless there are some theoretical physicists reading this, in which case...bugger off, you lot!) come prepackaged with a number of assumptions. Even the basic equations we’re taught in school only work when every other possible variable is being held constant. So it’s true, all right, but only for a given value of true.
It’s weird, that such a thing could develop. You can imagine early man shambling out of his cave one morning, and going “Hmm. If I imagine that teeth and claws and horns don’t exist, o boy, it’s meat tonight!” And then he tries this out on the next wild animal he sees, and has to spend the rest of the day and the night on top of a tree cursing the hell out of all random assumptions.
Assumption, besides being the mother of all fuck ups, is also the prerogative of those who can afford to have them. For example, in the practical sense, there’s no way to assume no gravity. You could tell yourself there’s no such thing, and perhaps even convince yourself and a few others, but unless you’re tripping on some psychotropic, hallucinogenic nonsense, you can’t get away from it.
So, why assume stuff? For the simple reason that we can’t encompass everything going on at once, and still retain sanity. Oh, sure, you can babble on about the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, but unless you’re a Douglas Adams type genius (in which case, I have a few questions for you about Desmond, the ten ton rhino), there’s no way you’ll get about to explaining it coherently. No, doing some particularly foul drug and then going “Yeah, man, but I SAW it, you know what I’m saying?” and then nodding encouragingly doesn’t count.
Interestingly, the fractured, boxed in world of Physics seems to be coming to this very conclusion – albeit, with a very, very strange addendum. Take Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, for example. It states that if you’re looking at an electron, or any other such subatomic particle, then you can either know its position, or its velocity, but not both. In other words, the act of determining one thing about something will change everything else about it. Kind of like a previous post, The Web of Life, but in this case, it’s actually valid. Well, valid for the kind of technology we have right now – an electron microscope is, for all it does, a particularly bizarre piece of equipment. Using it to study electrons is like studying trucks by smashing other trucks into them, and then following the pieces. Sure, it’s logically consistent, but…well, come on!
But suppose, for a moment, we decide to...well, bend these restrictions a little. You’ve already done it in school, if you’ve given your tenth boards with math. I’m talking about imaginary numbers. For those of you who want to know more, call up Madhav and ask him, but here’s a (probably mostly incorrect) summary of it.
Imaginary numbers first come knocking on your door when you deal with square roots of negative numbers. A square root of a number (X) is some number that when multiplied by itself gives you X. So, the square root of 64 is 8. Simple enough, yes? Now lets complicate matters a bit. What’s the square root of 100? Yes, well done, 10. -100? Ah. Here’s the tricky bit.
We can simplify this by taking -100 as 100 * -1. So, the square root becomes 10 * (square root of -1). Now, anyone who remembers the basics of multiplication will know that there’s no way you can multiply two numbers of the same sign (positive or negative), and arrive at a negative number. Chaitawyag, I’m not talking about you. You, my man, are gifted. But to get back to the point. Two positives make a positive when multiplied. Two negatives also make a positive when multiplied. So how to solve this? Enter the i.
(i), by itself, has no meaning. It is basically he square root of -1 ( we use the same cheap trick I used to solve -100 for every negative square root). Therefore, the square root, for example, of -64, is 8i. Cheap no? Nonetheless, effective. The problem comes in again, when you try to visualize the problem. I have 35i apples. Great, can I eat them? No, cause they’re imaginary apples. And only exist in potential, as it were. Great, can I eat them now? No, go away, you aggravating kid! WAAAAH! MUMMY! And so on.
Restrictions exist for the simple reason that without them, the infinity of the cosmos is unbearably lonely. And terrifying.
Although, if you manage to get past this sort of third rate soliloquizing, infinity can be rather fun.
Imagine life without restrictions – as in, all restrictions, of every possibly type. Like there was no gravity. No limit to what you could think of and create. Or perhaps just the thought of something would cause it to be created. I want a chocolate ice cream. Damn. Not working yet. Hmm, perhaps this idea needs a little bit of refining (I want an oil refinery. Hmm, no, that didn’t work either).
Human beings love restrictions. It’s only after you’ve suffered through eight hours of work on three hours of sleep that you truly realize the value of leisure. In the same way, you have to deny yourself something to give meaning to something else. In fact, this idea is so pervasive, it’s even influenced science. Consider, for a bit. Most scientific theories you would have read (unless there are some theoretical physicists reading this, in which case...bugger off, you lot!) come prepackaged with a number of assumptions. Even the basic equations we’re taught in school only work when every other possible variable is being held constant. So it’s true, all right, but only for a given value of true.
It’s weird, that such a thing could develop. You can imagine early man shambling out of his cave one morning, and going “Hmm. If I imagine that teeth and claws and horns don’t exist, o boy, it’s meat tonight!” And then he tries this out on the next wild animal he sees, and has to spend the rest of the day and the night on top of a tree cursing the hell out of all random assumptions.
Assumption, besides being the mother of all fuck ups, is also the prerogative of those who can afford to have them. For example, in the practical sense, there’s no way to assume no gravity. You could tell yourself there’s no such thing, and perhaps even convince yourself and a few others, but unless you’re tripping on some psychotropic, hallucinogenic nonsense, you can’t get away from it.
So, why assume stuff? For the simple reason that we can’t encompass everything going on at once, and still retain sanity. Oh, sure, you can babble on about the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, but unless you’re a Douglas Adams type genius (in which case, I have a few questions for you about Desmond, the ten ton rhino), there’s no way you’ll get about to explaining it coherently. No, doing some particularly foul drug and then going “Yeah, man, but I SAW it, you know what I’m saying?” and then nodding encouragingly doesn’t count.
Interestingly, the fractured, boxed in world of Physics seems to be coming to this very conclusion – albeit, with a very, very strange addendum. Take Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, for example. It states that if you’re looking at an electron, or any other such subatomic particle, then you can either know its position, or its velocity, but not both. In other words, the act of determining one thing about something will change everything else about it. Kind of like a previous post, The Web of Life, but in this case, it’s actually valid. Well, valid for the kind of technology we have right now – an electron microscope is, for all it does, a particularly bizarre piece of equipment. Using it to study electrons is like studying trucks by smashing other trucks into them, and then following the pieces. Sure, it’s logically consistent, but…well, come on!
But suppose, for a moment, we decide to...well, bend these restrictions a little. You’ve already done it in school, if you’ve given your tenth boards with math. I’m talking about imaginary numbers. For those of you who want to know more, call up Madhav and ask him, but here’s a (probably mostly incorrect) summary of it.
Imaginary numbers first come knocking on your door when you deal with square roots of negative numbers. A square root of a number (X) is some number that when multiplied by itself gives you X. So, the square root of 64 is 8. Simple enough, yes? Now lets complicate matters a bit. What’s the square root of 100? Yes, well done, 10. -100? Ah. Here’s the tricky bit.
We can simplify this by taking -100 as 100 * -1. So, the square root becomes 10 * (square root of -1). Now, anyone who remembers the basics of multiplication will know that there’s no way you can multiply two numbers of the same sign (positive or negative), and arrive at a negative number. Chaitawyag, I’m not talking about you. You, my man, are gifted. But to get back to the point. Two positives make a positive when multiplied. Two negatives also make a positive when multiplied. So how to solve this? Enter the i.
(i), by itself, has no meaning. It is basically he square root of -1 ( we use the same cheap trick I used to solve -100 for every negative square root). Therefore, the square root, for example, of -64, is 8i. Cheap no? Nonetheless, effective. The problem comes in again, when you try to visualize the problem. I have 35i apples. Great, can I eat them? No, cause they’re imaginary apples. And only exist in potential, as it were. Great, can I eat them now? No, go away, you aggravating kid! WAAAAH! MUMMY! And so on.
Restrictions exist for the simple reason that without them, the infinity of the cosmos is unbearably lonely. And terrifying.
Although, if you manage to get past this sort of third rate soliloquizing, infinity can be rather fun.
3 comments:
I must say I have no idea how you come up with these posts..how does your mind function in this way?!We need more thinking people like you..!It's like you belong to another realm!keep up the good work
imaginary apples, my man. not negative.
the problem is that the universe DOES seem to work using what we call imaginary numbers. a hell of a lot of space shuttles are launched using calculations involving i. involving me, too.
oh, and i think you should loosen the tie somewhat, the blood flow to the brain is getting somewhat stifled.
oh, and all these posts seem to be rather lengthy rambling fallouts of that three hour drunken conversation, eh? must give it a try again.
oh, and foolish of us to leave the reconstruction to you. i think Mr G isn't reading this or he'd have swooped in to accuse you of intellectual property copyright violations hehehehe.
Cherry: Heh, thanks, i really appreciate that. Cant take the credit, though, most of these ideas came up during a sozzled conversation - i was the only one of the three to bother writing any of it down...(Two of something and one of the other).
Cyberswami:Quiet on the tie, boy, it's a piece of art. And I aways leave the top button undone - rakishly rumpled, i tell myself.
Monkey in a suit is probably what others think. Oh well.
Oye, not so quick on the intellectual rights nonsense, there was precious little that was intellectual going on that light. And most of that cogitating was my dog.
Yeah, i have a tendency to ramble when i get the chance. it's so that the future ideas click into place while these are being used.
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