Learning out of curiosity: Bubbles of ignorance

The only way to learn is to learn out of curiosity, otherwise, there's no motivation. If you learn due to an external drive, you're not really learning. If you don't have curiosity for something, then learn something else until you find the right questions.

That last point is important - we learn new things because we find out that there are things that don't make sense to us, so we search out answers. If we are simply stamp collecting, then we will have no incentive to learn.

Ernest Rutherford famously said that "All science is either physics or stamp collecting". This demonstrates that had Rutherford tried his hand at biology, he would have epically failed. That's not to say that Rutherford wasn't intelligent, or capable. Indeed, he was probably more intelligent and capable than most people. Rather, he was uninterested. His experiences in the world had led him to the view that nothing other than physics was interesting. He would have seen no point in learning about biology, because it wouldn't have sated his curiosity.

I notice that the times I learn most are when I'm most interested and engaged, and that happens when what I'm learning about seems to answer, or at least hint at answering, questions that I had before. That feeling of discovery when you come across a potential solution to a problem you've had for a long time is a great one.

I suppose the fundamental problem of researchers, is that some problems are simply too big to have straightforward answers. The way to approach them is to use them as motivators, and search for leads. We become a little like detectives trying to solve a mystery. We use our prior experience and our imagination to attempt to find plausible clues, or leads. We will be interested in these leads because they seem like viable ways to answer our burning questions.

Ask any scientist or researcher what they are interested in, and they'll give you a list of topics. I suppose common ones include 'understanding intelligence/consciousness', 'understanding physics', 'curing cancer'. Maybe people are motivated for different reasons, and I'm sure that there are people out there who have an interest in these things because it might bring them riches, fame, or glory. But I feel like it's not really possible to make real progress in a field unless you're motivated by your own curiosity. There were questions we had as children, and they're probably questions that human beings have been trying to answer for thousands of years.

Maybe, ultimately, the question we are all asking is - "Who are we? What does this all mean?". It's a question every child probably asks themselves with or without knowing it, and its motivated humans to build civilisations, and led to the growth of philosophies, religions and other ideologies. All our questions are derivatives of those questions. We need to keep deriving questions until they are within our reach, and attack those, so that we can further penetrate the sea of ignorance in which our little bubbles of knowledge float. Maybe it's a higher-dimensional Non-Euclidean space of ignorance, in fact it almost certainly is. But let's keep penetrating till we hit other bubbles, or (gasp) finally break the surface and smell fresh air.

Can Money Buy Happiness?

A Sisyphean perspective sheds light on the age-old question of whether money can buy happiness.

Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash

During this unusual time, many people, including myself, may be starting to take a more introspective look at themselves and their lives, thinking about their choices and about bigger questions that might otherwise be neglected when we are preoccupied with ordinary life, whatever that is for us. One question that has been on the back burner of my mind for a while is that which forms the title of this piece. It’s a question that has plagued people perhaps ever since money was created. Maybe, even before that, ever since the possession of material goods began to have meaning. It asks whether having more material wealth, more things, or more capacity to obtain (buy) those things, can lead us to states of greater contentment, satisfaction, enjoyment, or whatever else we define happiness to mean.

Well, hidden in that question is an important point — in order for us to ask whether money can buy happiness, it is important to first define what happiness is, as we would with any other commodity. We wouldn’t, for example, walk into a confectionery shop asking for “something sweet”, possibly to a quizzical stare from an understandably confused sales assistant. We would ask instead for a specific type of sweet. Then the sales assistant would heave a sigh of relief and direct us to the appropriate shelf where stacks of said product were neatly lined up, ready for our choosing (and purchase).

Happiness means many different things to different people, at a range of different levels. At an experiential level, we deal in ideas such as “relaxation”, “popularity”, and “lack of stress”. These are all good feelings or experiences, but feelings alone are among the most difficult things to objectively measure. Perhaps we would do better to consider things at the biological level: there are a few chemicals inside our brains that are strongly associated with the broad feeling we call happiness: acetylcholine, dopamine, and serotonin. I won’t attempt to go into the function of each individual chemical here, but each has an important function in different areas of our lives, regulating our motivation to do things, bonding with our peers, and reinforcement of positive behaviour. But those who believe that the human brain is greater than the sum of its parts would vehemently object to us stopping there. Let us instead consider the spiritual or metaphorical level. Many people hold such thoughts as “lack of want”, “feeling at peace with ourselves”, or “contentment”, as goals to strive towards, feeling they will be happy when they achieve these states.

It is clear that there is no single agreed-upon definition of what it means to be happy, so one might argue that it is a difficult to question to answer. The real answer is, that all of this is relative, that there is no wrong answer. What a cop-out, I hear you say, the question is now moot! But this relativity, I would argue, rather than making the question meaningless, actually explains its true essence and enables us to form a general answer that isn’t riddled with conditions and provisos. By agreeing that happiness itself is an experience that is personal to each human being and that one person’s happiness is not necessarily another’s, this can explain the vastly varying definitions of what it means to be happy. We all know what happiness means to us, but we do not necessarily understand what it means for others.

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

The study of meaning is a tricky one, namely because it seems absurd for any philosophical study not to assume meaning as an axiom, and if we assume meaning as an axiom in the study of meaning it seems a circular argument. Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped many great philosophical minds writing books on the subject, one of the most famous being the 20th-century French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus. In “The Myth of Sisyphus”, Camus references the ancient Greek legend of a man called Sisyphus condemned to spend eternity rolling a rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down again when he reaches the top. Despite the ostensible meaninglessness of this endeavour, Camus concludes that “One must imagine Sisyphus happy”. His reasoning is that Sisyphus’ rock is something that defines his existence — it bootstraps meaning from nothing. Indeed, the moral of his story is that everything we do in life is ultimately meaningless in some sense, and it is only through the relation of the things we do to other things in our lives that they acquire meaning.

Camus’ argument brings me to the key statement — happiness is defined on an individual basis by pursuing or by achieving those things which give our life meaning.

What gives my life meaning will certainly be different from what gives your life meaning. Some ascribe meaning to wealth, some to success, some to becoming the best at what they do in a certain field. Some people derive their meaning from giving to others, from improving others’ lives, from seeing their impact on the world. Some people find their meaning in achieving their ideal self, some from religion, some from their partners, friends, family, and some from their children. The list goes on and is endless and unique to each individual. I’m sure that if you consider your own life, you’ll be able to identify a few key things that give your life a meaning, a purpose, the things that you enjoy doing, or wish you could do. You’ll notice I mentioned wealth. What I will attempt to show is that the pursuit of wealth in itself has no meaning.

Someone recently told me about how he’d seen others in the world become successful at a young age, attributing their success to their upbringing and the circumstances surrounding their birth. I took no issue with this, but I did note that when he talked about success, he talked about it as something desirable, almost conflating it with the idea of happiness. Ironically, it was exactly because these people had acquired so much wealth that this person was citing them as an example of someone who was happier, who was luckier. All too often we are jealous of those people around us, believing that they have better lives than us, wishing that we had what they had. This is perhaps because we see others around us sharing in our desires, complimenting people for being rich or famous. Without this sounding too much like a homily, I truly believe that what many people truly desire is for others to love and respect them, and society has told us that those who are loved and respected are those who are rich, those with power, those with influence. This is perhaps the reason why we ask whether money can buy happiness.

But it is clear that to be loved and respected by those around us we do not have to be rich. Does this mean that those people who strive for riches are mistaken and that money does not buy happiness at all? Well, this is only partly true. Now that we have a working definition of what happiness is — namely, the ability to pursue those things that are meaningful to us, let us take our initial question further. Money is, of course, necessary. A painter living on the streets seems, on the surface, much less likely to be as satisfied in the pursuit of her goal than a painter living in a penthouse apartment overlooking a city skyline. But perhaps we are simply evaluating the quality of others’ lives by the standards we have developed for ourselves. Often we say, and forgive me the trite saying, that the poorest people are the happiest. My belief is that this can be the case because those people that are both poor and simultaneously happy are those who see money for what it truly is — a means to an end, something to facilitate their lives and to help them do things. Money is not something to be stockpiled, so that we can show off how many digits we have at the end of our latest bank statement. People who see the world in this way, who are not necessarily poor, have broken the false link between money and happiness.

As I said, money is essential to our lives. We need money to sustain our livelihoods and to keep us healthy and out of danger, physically and mentally. Money, then, can be seen as giving happiness when it removes barriers in pursuit of those things that give us meaning.

Let’s return to the lives of our two artists, perhaps they are both happy. Perhaps the first artist feels she cannot paint unless she feels secure in the knowledge that she will not have to search for a place to sleep that night. Perhaps part of her meaning in life is having a beautiful skyline view out of her window. If this is her reason for striving to earn money to buy the apartment she has, then money has indeed bought her happiness — it has paved the way for her to achieve what she dreams of. Coming to the second artist, she lives on the streets, but is equally happy. Her dream is to be free to explore the city at night to her heart’s desire, to see those things that others don’t, and to simply have the freedom to paint and draw those things she finds beautiful. She doesn’t particularly care about how others perceive her.

It seems these extreme examples demonstrate that small differences in what people find meaningful can lead to drastic differences in material requirements. On the surface of things, things seem unfair: one artist derives meaning from activities that cost nothing, whereas the other requires expensive rent to pay for her meaning to be fulfilled. However, let us entertain the idea that the first artist simply wanted to see beautiful scenery from her window — she saw meaning in that. In fact, in order to do this, she could equally well have been living in a small apartment at the bottom of an unsightly street. This wouldn’t have prevented her from climbing to the top of the tallest buildings in London each day and looking out on the city. The moral? We derive meaning from our experiences, or what we seek to experience, and there is more than one way to skin a cat.

My conclusion is that money can buy us happiness, in so far as it enables us to do the things we like to do in life. Most things that give our lives meaning are often free, or very inexpensive — pursuing hobbies, spending time with friends and family, and learning new things to quote a few. Problems creep in when we start to conflate money with popularity, status, or likeability. Money alone has no power over us, rather, it is the artificial association of money with these things in our own minds, and the minds of society, that have given the acquisition of riches and material wealth a meaning in itself. To become happy, we need to look inside ourselves and ask what the essential qualities of our dreams are. Perhaps they might cost a bit less than we might have previously thought.

The Disappearing Plank

What I am about to tell you about is magic - REAL magic - that can be performed using mere mathematics. This is not a trick. It is reality. I will tell you how to make an object disappear instantly.

This relies on the principle of a discontinuity. A discontinuity in mathematics is simply a jump in some form from one value to another without any numbers in between. For example, if the temperature were to suddenly become 30 degrees Celsius this would be a discontinuity, whereas if the temperature were to change in reality it would probably be some intermediate value in between.

Imagine this: a black plank so long that it is infinite in length. Let us imagine that you are able to pass through the plank without it interacting with you, but that at the same time you are still able to see it. Let's imagine you are looking at that plank right now and that the plank itself is parallel to your body. You cannot really know how far the plank is away from you because that would require some point of reference which you do not have with an object that is infinite: you cannot find its centre.

Let us just say that the plank can be seen at an infinite distance. Look at the plank now: what do you see? You simply see a large, black, vertical line stretching upwards and downwards in front of your eyes: like a stripe masking a part of your vision. Let us now say that you are somehow able to rotate the plank: you rotate it and there is no change: the plank remains a black, vertical line in your vision. But something interesting is about to happen...

As you start to become closer and closer to being eye level with the plank you continue to see the plank in exactly the same way, but suddenly the black line disappears! Your vision is restored and the plank is gone! What has happened. The world stays like this for a while, as you stop the plank rotating and wonder where it has gone. You move very slightly upwards and the black stripe is back in your vision: you can see the entirety of the plank. There was no middle ground: you either had that black stripe in your vision or you didn't. The plank was either there or it wasn't and there was no evidence of it fading or coming back into existence.

Knowledge

When somebody knows everything, they might be right in their own eyes, but certainly not from a less biased perspective. Knowing everything means that there is nothing you do not understand - and when somebody reaches that level of unwillingness to learn then they are infinitely more stupid than someone who is clueless but is open to new ideas.

To truly "see the bigger picture", we must be willing to see beyond the boundaries allegorised in the picture above.

To infinity and its negative - a demonstration of the nature of space in the universe

This graph is analogical to movement in the universe. It is in fact the graph of the reciprocal of the hyperbolic tan function. What I wanted to demonstrate was the seemingly impossible nature of the graph switching from a value of infinity to negative infinity across the line x=0. I think that when we do discover the exact nature of space in the universe it will be dependent on a curved model in so that the three dimensional plane of space will fold back in on itself, metaphorically speaking, like a sphere so that anyone attempting to reach the edge of the universe will find it is in fact impossible.

Probability, chaos and the nature of creation

Probability and an elementary, almost axiomatically governing rule of the universe (thoughts given through the analogy of a complex puzzle)

I will attempt in this article to describe my views on how probability plays an intrinsic role in the governing of chaos and the universe as we know it.
Many subscribe to the belief that the universe is fundamentally predictable through mathematics. In fact Einstein once famously said that "God does not play dice with the universe". It turned out, in a sense, that Einstein was wrong. But he was wrong only in the sense that betting companies are wrong to hedge their bets with making money through gambling. The only thing that makes betting companies money is that a probability describing a single event never has a certain outcome, but is in fact a way of describing a myriad of many complex factors which are all mathematical and will hence yield the same result in a great enough sample. Remember that if anything can be conceived to possibly (or impossibly) happen it is possible. It is just that the more likely events occur a higher proportion of the time. Just as we must define limits for integration, without which the sum of any specific value is zero, probability is meaningless when applied to single values. Probabilities are proportions of a sample on a large scale. As the sample size tends to infinity, it is 100% certain that the probabilities will also tend to the actual proportions obtained from the infinite sample.
In fact, the classical mechanics of the universe are simply a large scale description of predictable patterns in probability on a very large scale: the laws which govern these mechanics provide the footholds for mathematics and are maths' only claim to validity. Force is equal to mass multiplied by acceleration because of a repertoire of different subatomic forces, energies, masses - among other things - that all interplay to produce this predictable pattern on the larger scale. At the smallest scale the universe is in fact still affected by what goes on around it. So, in fact one day we might in fact realise - if such a statement is true - that the quantum mechanics are in fact affected by the large scale mechanics of physics and visa versa.
This might be another "strange loop" which could further support Hofstadter's opinion/hypothesis that strange loops are very important. In fact, they might prove to be a stepping stone in understanding how patterns in the universe arise.
On to my main point - an essay to describe evolution in terms of an infinitely complex puzzle and to attempt to shed some of my self-validated insight on intelligence's origins and nature.
Think of an infinitely complex maze, further convoluted by the fact that the maze is affected in strange ways by the way you move through it, so going through the maze to a certain spot - you may only return to your original state through backtracking your steps and actions exactly to your starting point. This can be likened to travelling back in time. You cannot take shortcuts through the maze. Think of intelligence as one possible location in the maze. The achievement of reaching this location (creating intelligence) is only possibly attained through one single route, since there is only one possible route to any single place in the maze. Even if two different routes are exactly the same but for one footstep for example taking a step with the right foot rather than the left foot, this small effect will produce a butterfly effect, meaning that a difference between the two paths will arise which shall become more and more pronounced as you progress further and further away from the location at which you committed this deed.
In fact, the pathways can be thought of as progress through time and the different pathways, in this case, as evolutionary branches on the evolutionary tree of life. In fact, there are many other situations in which this analogy applies anywhere where probability and infinite possibilities play a key role.
Evolution follows the concept of probability. It was infinitely unlikely that "intelligence" as we know it should ever have been developed. In fact, intelligent humans (homo sapiens) have only existed for the equivalent of the blink of an eye in the timeline of the universe, even in the comparatively minute period of existence of life on earth. Had one idiosyncratic genetic mutation not occurred at exactly the right time and place in the past, intelligence might never have existed - or perhaps existed but in an altered form. In fact, we also have to think outside of the internal development of humans. For instance, what could have happened if the individual human or lifeform in which this mutation occurred was killed before it could reproduce. That lifeform would never have passed on the line of material necessary for humans to develop. Therefore the events in the past leading up to this were all important in the timeline in which intelligence was created. In fact, the external effect need not be as extreme as death, but only a small interaction occurring in a different way. Generally - as I alluded to earlier through mentioning the butterfly effect - the further back a change occurs in timelines, the more exponential its effects will become in the future. This is simply due to the nature of chaos.
Chaos is a thing we use to describe infinitely complex physical - or other - processes which we cannot possibly predict - since such an attempt would be paradoxical. This would be because in the act of trying to assess the future of a chaotic system, we ourselves would be changing its course, and would have to include the act of our own prediction in the context: the instrument affects the experiment. It is in fact impossible to ever conduct any "experiment" whether that be a thought experiment or a physical experiment, without in fact affecting the outcome itself. Such an experiment would need to infinitely recurrently apply corrections to the experiment to account for the influence of the experimenting tools themselves. One such thing is the theoretical model of the universe in a computer, which would have to include the computer itself and its effects. This is my view of what we mean by relativity in the universe, and why I believe constancy is the only possible perspective which could help us truly understand how the universe works.
If the impossibility of this supposed trial by error (natural selection in other words) method of obtaining a pathway to intelligence seems too unlikely, then consider this: intelligence did not in fact exist until the moment it was created. We only place such a high value on intelligence because it mystifies us: we do not fully understand the universe or intelligence, because we are using intelligence itself to understand it. In fact, it is questionable whether 'understanding' is something inherent in the universe, or simply another function of intelligence itself - something created from nothing. This also goes for mathematics, science and the content of this article, all of which are functions or consequences of intelligence.
It is almost certain that something infinitely more amazing than intelligence could have been created through natural selection, and that something infinitely more amazing than that could also have been created ad infinitum. There will always be a better possibility for perfection would imply that there are a finite number of outcomes. This can be explained through the nature of creating something from nothing: that something is not defined and so we assume it has "infinite value" - because 'something' is every possibility ever conceived or not conceived. That is the brilliance of creation and possibly why mathematics has evolved as a tool used to describe the universe:
I believe explanation of the power of mathematics can be found through starting with the simple statement 0=0. The rules of algebra dictate that we may apply any transformation to either side as long as we apply it to the other. In the mathematical sense, we might add 2 to either side to give 2=2. But this could also be written 1+1=2. I firmly subscribe to the belief that every action has an equal and opposite reaction is an underlying principle in the creation of the universe. If something is created, its equal and opposite must also be created. Through various transformations things might appear not to sum to 0 in the universe: there are a growing multitude of different physical phenomena that we must look at and consider in describing the universe. Yet, I believe that if all things are reduced to their simplest form - rearranging the equation - this will not result in a solvable equation with universal variables, but a simple statement that can be reduced to 0=0. Of course you would have to "solve simultaneous equations on a grand scale" to achieve this, but in doing so would better understand the patterns of the universe. I think that you must think of forces, energy, fields etc. to all be intrinsically linked and to be of the same sort of substance (i.e. things which exist in this universe the traditional sense) in order for this to be possible, however the universe as we know it is such a complicated soup of all these things that it becomes difficult, almost impossible, to make sense of it in this fashion. I also believe that relativity arises from everything having an equal and opposite as shown by the diagram below, which I shall leave for the reader to consider:

There is no such thing as magic!

This article is not about the magic of the Harry Potter Universe - that which fuels the dynamics of wizarding society, but rather the magic that seems to fuel on a more metaphysical level - the magic of intelligence!
If you have ever been involved in anything remotely academic, you will know what I mean when I talk about IQ. However, what does this number which supposedly determines how proficient you are and what your potential is to outmatch others of the human race mentally actually mean in a practical sense?
The IQ test was in fact first coined to test stupidity and mental disability rather than intelligence, with the levels of intelligence ranging from 'normal' to 'moron' down to 'idiot'. Nowadays, the IQ test is supposedly a distinguisher between those who are able to do... well... do well at an IQ test and those who aren't, putting you on a scale where 100 is the average. The IQ test is meant to test a range of different skills which in fact constitute human intelligence, but personally I believe this to be completely untrue. I believe a test is only as good as the person who makes it - there is no one test which can be used to test peoples' intelligent. People, unlike animals, think in different ways which is what distinguishes us from animals which are of lesser intelligence which all seem to have many more stimulus-response functions embedded into their brains, as opposed to more open and free thinking abilities.
But the fact is that this supposed 'test' of intelligence isn't really that great at all. Think of all the people mentioned on this page, with surprisingly average IQs coupled with outstandingly brilliant levels of success.
What I am trying to say is that IQ has absolutely no link to what you might consider to be a 'useful' person whatsoever. What I mean when I talk about a useful person is a person who is able to actively contribute to add to the total sum of knowledge or ability to see the world in different ways of society as a whole - someone who might help other people, not through common action but through acts of intellectual good (or in cases such as Fritz Haber and military research, occasionally thinking up intelligent ideas about harming others). Think of the coining of germ theory, by Louis Pasteur, or the amazing impact that Newton and Einstein have had on the paradigms of scientists everywhere.
Paradigms are what I see in my head almost immediately when I think of IQ. Stephen Covey's famous book on the '7 Habits of Highly Effective People' relied on this heavily in defining what made an effective person who they were. The way we view the world is simply the world we then live in, work in, have fun in and learn in. The mind is an amazing thing - what it produces is literally what the mind then experiences. We could in fact very feasibly be living in a world quite unlike that which our thoughts seem to suggest, and yet be completely unaware for our entire lives simply because we do not know how to see the world any differently. A great example of this is the amazing moment when Tommy Edison, a blind Youtuber, was asked to draw pictures of objects. Something I was astounded at was his blatant lack of depth perception. As he drew images of objects, everything he drew seemed to be right in front of him, since the only way he experienced things was by touching them. Even the sense of sound is different, since not being able to see meant that sounds getting softer might not mean things getting 'farther away', but might in fact mean these things simply becoming quieter as they faded out of his existence. Unfortunately, to truly understand his experience you would have to be blind. But we can in fact take this attitude and change our own paradigms in other ways to become more creative and intelligent.
If two people are given the same mundane task, and yet one person has a different, a more proactive almost, paradigm - who do you think will perform more effectively? For example, two men are sent out on a fishing trip by a grocer, each to catch a certain number of fish for him in a day. They are lent boats by the grocer to do this task and a sum of money is agreed for both of them when they have given him the fish. Unfortunately, any excess fish will not increase the wage since the grocer has a limited number of customers and the fish go bad within a day or two of being caught. One fisherman views this trip as an opportunity to catch the minimum number of fish required of him. He does so through hard work and as soon as he is finished rushes back home to give the grocer his fish so he can in return receive a set sum of cash. He laughs as he thinks of the other man who is still sitting in his boat for hours after him, while he is at home enjoying a warm drink and wonders what stupid thought came into his head to make him stay out for, what this man regards as, an unnecessarily long amount of time. He won't be able to sell the grocer any extra fish anyway!
The other man however, is very aware of what he is doing. He has stayed out to catch extra fish for himself. He viewed this fishing trip as an opportunity to utilise the free resource of a boat that was given to him by his employer - the grocer. He comes back home late at night and sells the set number of fish to the grocer that the grocer had asked of him. However, the next morning he then takes the extra fish to the market. Now that he is safely aware that he has made enough money to take care of his family for the day, just as the other man has, instead of sitting at home until the next day of work he can now make extra money by selling these fish. He sets up a table there and begins to sell.
By the end of the day he has around double the amount of money he needs to support him and his family for a day. He then uses this extra money to employ a fisherman - the very man he was out fishing with yesterday - to go and catch fish for him, benefitting from the profits and make a long term gain, simply because he viewed the same task in a different way and then acted upon his thoughts. He saw the fishing trip as an opportunity to use the boat rather than sell the fish and make some quick cash. This man might need never go fishing again now, whereas the other man will never give up his single-minded view and will never grow.
The difference between the two men in this story was their views on how the world works. One man saw the world as a logical place. The other man had what might be regarded as a more creative view - less moulded by the walls of society which we build in our own heads. These walls limit how we see the world and consequently limit how we are able to use our resources. It is not what you have but how you use it!
Similarly, it has often been said that the size of brains has a direct effect on intelligence. This is however, according to numerous scientific studies, completely untrue. In fact, individuals with larger brains than the human race may actually be considerably less intelligent in the conventional sense. Think of whales for example. Similarly, brain size in humans does not seem to have any correlation to scores on IQ tests.
What does have an impact on how "intelligent" someone is, is how they view the world and how they view academic challenges. Think of how differently people would live if they saw maths as an arcade game. They would not consider it in the same way ever again. Instead of coming to a problem and asking for help from another person who had already solved it, they would try it themselves, attempting to come up with the best solution possible - the most creative solution. Why? Because they found it enjoyable! Much as they would if they were given a mission in Call of Duty or a quest in World of Warcraft or perhaps an opportunity to play football for their favourite team. The only thing which stops people being brilliant at things are excuses: I'm an average mathematician, I'm not that great at tennis etc. etc. etc. It is only when we can learn - to take Harry Potter as an example once again - to take the leap and run at Platform 9 $\frac{3}{4}$ that we discover that barrier was non existent in the first place. We unlock a whole new magical world which would have just as easily slipped through our fingers if we had delayed the opportunity long enough.There is then no such thing as magic, not in terms of intelligence. However, the products of intelligence, or as I would now like you to see it - enjoying being able to challenge yourself to see things for what they could be rather than what you think that they are, are what can really be said to be magic.

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

Robert Kennedy

Paradigm shifts:

More paradigm shifts:

Is that person annoyed at you, or simply frustrated at the way they can never seem to get close to you?

If nothing really matters in the end since we die, why shouldn't you just go out and do what you want?

For a visual paradigm shift explore this 3-D technique:

http://www.magiceye.com/

If you would like to shift your paradigm now, go and watch these videos:

This video might change your view of violence in other countries

And this one might change your view of the blind and the difference words can make

Please post any paradigm shifts you come across! These, I believe are the key to intelligence. In other words - be inspired to think differently! This is what humanity is about. How do you think Siddhartha Gautama came to become enlightened? He realised something different about the world - something nobody else could see was there. This whole article has been about how intelligence simply didn't exist - it was a paradigm shift for me however long it was ago. What can you see, that nobody else can?

Imaginatively Real - Understanding Imaginary Numbers and why they're not really all that 'Imaginary'

Imaginary numbers are one of the mysterious parts of mathematics, which most people have heard about - but not many people truly understand.
The first thing that will spring to mind for most when we talk about imaginary numbers, is the mysterious symbol $i$.
Now, we ask ourselves, what does $i$ actually mean? Well, $i$ is simply the number which is equal to $-1$ when squared, so:
$$i^2 = -1$$
Or you will sometimes see:
$$i = \sqrt{-1}$$
Now that we "know" what $i$ is, we can use this number to solve a lot of previously unsolvable problems - a notable case being electronics. In fact, you may have heard of $i$ sometimes being written as $j$. This is because in physics, the letter $i$ is often used to denote current:

Engineers use a 'j' to indicate the square root of minus one since they tend to use 'i' as a current. Mathematicians use 'i' for this since they don't know a current from a hole in the ground! 
University of St Andrews

However, I suppose you might still be thinking this is all very well and good, $i$ is the square root of minus 1 - but what does it mean in practice? Show me some evidence!

In fact, there is a very good video on YouTube which explains how $i$ actually works in a very intuitive way. Here is a summary of what he is trying to say - you will soon see how exactly this fits into electronics.

$i$, just like any other symbol in our number system, is simply used to describe a quantity. $i$ is not all too dissimilar to negative numbers in that sense - it is equally as valid as the positive set of numbers and yet because we cannot "touch" or "interact" with $i$ very practically, we often lose sense of what it really is. Professor Arthur T. Benjamin of Harvey Mudd College sums this up in one of his lectures in the series 'The Joy of Mathematics'. Professor Benjamin challenges us to think about the ways in which the concept of simple negative numbers, which seem so obvious and necessary to us in a society where we use them everyday (profits and losses; increases and decreases etc.) might have seemed as alien as complex numbers like $i$ for example, to people of another age simply because they did not really use them in practice. How can you have a negative amount of rocks? Surely the only way to represent something in real life is using positive, tangible, whole objects? We now know this not to be true, since negative numbers are a necessity, but it is very much so that imaginary numbers are just the same - because most people do not really come into contact with them in a tangible sense, they lose sight of what imaginary numbers actually are.
Now, how can we understand imaginary numbers and how they fit into real life? Using something simple of course: circles!
Imagine an object travelling in one direction. We know from the laws of physics that this object might have a velocity in that direction. A velocity is a vector quantity and has magnitude, but more critically direction. Say, we wanted to reverse the velocity of this object, i.e. make it travel at an equal speed in an opposite direction. We need to keep the magnitude the same but rotate it through 180 degrees, or $2\pi$ radians - whatever floats your boat.

N.B. In fact, radians might be more sensible here - since they're more natural to use with circles (or else it would have been pretty superficial and unnecessary to come up with them!) - I might do a post about this later.

If we want to make an object travel in the opposite direction, once again from physics, we know that all we need to do is multiply its current velocity by $-1$. This makes sense in terms of the conservation of momentum for example, where we can see an explosion as valid when two particles with zero initial velocity then have velocities which are of opposite sign to one another. ($-1 + 1 = 0$ so the conservation of momentum applies)

So, we know that we can make an object travel in an opposite direction by multiplying its velocity by $-1$ - this gives its opposite. However, what if we wanted to make it travel in a perpendicular direction? Think about it - perpendicular means at 90 degrees (or $\pi$ radians) and since two turns by this number of degrees/radians would give you a full 180 degree ($2\pi$) turn, we simply need to multiply by the square-root of this half-turn. In other words the square-root of minus one.

But we need a name for this new value and guess what?
$$i$$
If you're still going to try to prove to me that $i$ "doesn't exist" now, then I'd like to hear how? $i$ seems to be essential - it must exist since the square root of minus one "doesn't" in the set of real numbers. In another world, maybe $i$ is the norm - in fact it could be if you looked at the problem from a perspective starting 90 degrees/ $\pi$ radians later!

Now we can draw up a new scale - with values of $i$ included. We can pretend each point is a state of motion of the particle. Those that involve 2 axes (real and imaginary parts) are called complex numbers.  But, you can also have vectors in complex space - vectors are just transformations relative to a point of origin. If there is no point of origin you can simply think of a vector as coming from the point (0,0) or $O$ as you may have seen it written in all those maths problems that now make a lot more sense. That's really all there is to it. So, the point $[1,2i]$ simply represents a magnitude in a fixed direction. It can also be written as $1 + 2i$ if you are representing the complex number relative to the origin.

Lets say we call that point $z$, so $z = 1 + 2i$ is the complex number (vector). Remember - you can add/subtract vectors (since they represent translations) so you can also do this with complex numbers. In short: if you represent the complex number as a set of coordinates, you've already defined the starting point (the origin), however if you define it as a vector equation - this will be assumed to have started from the origin, however you can also say it is relative to another point. Lets say this was $[4, 4i]$ - then the end point of the vector $z = 1 + 2i$ relative to this point would be $4 + 4i + 1 + 2i = 5 + 6i$ or $[5, 6i]$ - a new complex number - and remember that you simply group the separate real and imaginary components to add or subtract. You can also perform operations on them similar to those when dealing with polynomials, where when equating or performing mathematical operations with two or more polynomials, you simply equate coefficients of the same type e.g. $x^2$. As with vectors, you could also represent a complex number in the form $[\frac{x}{yi}]$ - a vector translation.
Moving on: guess what we can use to calculate each part (the magnitude and the direction)? The omnipresent trigonometry

Lets see - the direction and magnitude of a complex number is very similar to the direction of a vector in physics, except when talking about complex numbers the direction (or angle from the horizontal) is called the argument and the modulus (similar to magnitude in vectors). These two components can also be combined into one, as you will see, to represent the complex number in a different form: the trigonometric form. It all seems to link together.

So, lets take the vector "$z$" above again. If we want to represent it on a diagram (as a vector, we can simply draw it as above. However, if we want to simply look at the magnitude of that line (in practicality the speed at which the point is travelling) we can use Pythagoras' Theorem.

As can be seen on the diagram (simply click to zoom) I have now split the complex number up into its two original components - the real and the imaginary. Now, before I tell you how to use the Pythagorean Theorem to work out the modulus (magnitude) I need to explain an insight I had into signs of numbers to you).

Signs of Numbers

How I see it, the signs of numbers are not actually part of the numbers themselves - numbers such as 4,5,6 which we take as the "normal" numbers are simply numbers of the dimension (note this is not official - I simply use this description since I think it makes sense) $+r$, in other words real, positive. I see this $+r$ as the descriptor of the number - used to describe which dimension it belongs to. The exact opposite dimension is $-r$ or real, negative. These real dimensions, are not by any means the most important however - there are of course the imaginary dimensions, which are equally as valid. These dimensions are exactly perpendicular to the real dimensions as seen on the diagram, and is composed of both an imaginary, poistive and an imaginary, negative dimension. What I am trying to say is that when we describe numbers as "$2$" or "$-2$" we should really describe them as "$2r$" or "$-2r$", since we do this for the imaginary numbers by adding "$i$". Now I can continue with the explanation.

So, the diagram above should really have "$+1r$" in place of the "$1$" along the real axis. We know however, that Pythagoras' Theorem states that we must calculate the modulus of the two components added together to find the magnitude. Now, when you calculate the modulus of an expression, you take each component in turn, take away its sign (which in this case we will be thinking of as the dimension) and then finally square each part and take the square root of the overall expression. That is how you do it: the reasons behind this are in the Pythagorean Theorem itself. However, I suspect you want a proof of why $a^2 + b^2 = c^2$ in a triangle of hypotenuse $c$. Well, the geometric proof can be found here. (There are many other possible proofs - I think I found website listing upwards of 40!)
So, now that we know how to find the modulus, we merely square the 'coefficients' of the two components. We therefore obtain:
$$2^2 + 1^2 = M^2$$
$$M = \sqrt{2^2 + 1^2}$$
$$M = \sqrt{5}$$
In fact, the generally accepted notation for the "magnitude" or modulus of a complex number is simply... the modulus notation, so for our $z$ this would be:
$$|z| = \sqrt{5}$$
So, now that we have the length of the line (with no dimensions - this isn't actually in the real, positive form) we can calculate the argument - this is simply the angle which the complex number 'vector' makes with the real, positive axis.
To do this we use trigonometry. In fact, we can actually draw a similarity between the complex number vector we are working on and that of the many triangles which make the unit circle in a CAST diagram, often used in trigonometry - an interesting point to note.

Source

We can see that the complex number's modulus is very similar to the magnitude of a force/velocity vector. Ask yourself now - how would you express a vector in terms of its two components? Well, it should of course be the two separate vector components (here components means the components including the angle and the magnitude) added together. i.e. if you had a road and you wanted to get from its start to its end, you could simply follow a horizontal path then a vertical path, once you had completed the horizontal component. The total change in displacement would be the two displacements added together.
So, working out the angle, as you might've guessed, is just simple trigonometry. Since our components are real, positive ($+1r$)and imaginary, positive ($+2i$), it follows we can get a positive angle using the tan ratio (I will do an article on trigonometry and how sin, cos and tan are all linked perhaps, as well as how both they and the logarithmic functions can be estimated using the infinite Taylor series), since:
$$tan(\theta) = \frac{opposite}{adjacent}$$
So...
$$tan(arg(z)) = \frac{2}{1}$$
$$tan(arg(z)) = 2$$
$$arg(z) = tan^{-1}(2)$$
Once again using the magnitude of the numbers only and not their "dimensions".
You could of course work in radians or in degrees, but you must stick to your guns once you have picked one. Once again, I would advise radians since circles are involved - since it is more "natural" (since radians are in terms of $\pi$ and $\pi$ is at the heart of all circles).
So, what do we do now that we have used Pythagoras and Trigonometry to work out the modulus and argument? Well, we can now express the original vector in trigonometric form. Instead of each component having a magnitude and a dimension, each component will now have a magnitude and an angle which can be helpful if you need both the real and imaginary components in the same "form".
Think about how you might do this for a normal physics vector - you have the hypotenuse and the argument. You simply need to obtain an expression for the imaginary component using the $cos$ ratio and the real component using the $sin$ ratio.
$$sin(\theta) = \frac{opposite}{hypotenuse}$$
$$opposite (imaginary) = hypotenuse[sin(\theta)]$$
$$opposite (imaginary) = 5[sin(tan^{-1}(2))]$$

$$cos(\theta) = \frac{adjacent}{hypotenuse}$$
$$adjacent (real) = hypotenuse[cos(\theta)]$$
$$adjacent (real) = 5[cos(tan^{-1}(2))]$$

There we go, and to get from the origin to the end of the vector we just add the two components (doesn't matter about the order:
$$z = 5[cos(tan^{-1}(2))] + 5[sin(tan^{-1}(2))]$$
$$z = 5[[sin(tan^{-1}(2)) + cos(tan^{-1}(2))]$$
The above is the trigonometric form.

Now that you understand how to work with complex numbers a bit better: here's a little bit of insight into how they're vital to electronics:
I obtained the following images from this website: you should go and check it out for a more expanded explanation.

Look at the moving diagram - its a model of how an Alternating Current Works - a current will not suddenly change from I to -I and back again, it will oscillate, with the sine curve modelling its motion in one plane. This plane can be regarded as our real plane. This is shown in the last diagram - where physics equations are substituted in to the complex and real parts to get an overall expression for the phase or the angle $\theta$.
It just goes to show how circles, trigonometry and circular motion are all inherently linked (article?).
However, simply doing this ignores a major part of the picture: the horizontal plane. Unfortunately our real numbers have all been used up on the axis modelling the vertical motion. But we can still include it using imaginary numbers. Do you see where this is going?
Imaginary numbers, as you have seen are linked to almost every important topic in mathematics: circular motion, vectors, diagrams, trigonometry, calculus (the change of the trigonometric curve over time in the AC), etc. etc. But one question: is it imaginary numbers that links all of these, or all all of these simply inherently linked themselves? I agree with the latter and I hope reading this Blog will convince you to agree with me.

Here's a nice video to finish off with by Sixty Symbols of Nottingham University.
If nothing else, Philip Moriarty's confusion should reassure you.

Important note: I write this Blog on my own and undoubtedly I will make mistakes. Please do not hesitate to correct me in the comments if I am wrong or slightly misled about something, since this Blog is an essay in learning for myself as much as its readers. Discussions are just as good. I really appreciate your involvement. Any contribution is part of the Blog itself.

The Self Referencing Proof or (God's) Pure Essence Tainted Upon Entering this World

Watching this video by VSauce recently, reminded me of a question that I had once asked myself: do we all see colours in the same way? When Michael mentioned Tommy Edison in the video, I was absolutely dumbfounded, since a mere month ago I had visited his channel and gone through the same thought process mentioned in the video. If colours are in fact merely relative illusions which require you to actually be somebody to experience, then is everything else different for everyone else, and is our perception of reality blinding us to others' perceptions? Who is to say that the things we touch, feel, see and generally experience through our senses are experienced in a similar way by anybody else? In fact, if everything you think about in life depends on your 'view' on it (assuming your 'view' has been shaped by the experiences you have gone through since you were born) then must the physical senses also by that conclusion be subjective - were they shaped by what happened to you while developing from one lowly cell into a fully functional organism?
Anyway, watching the video highlighted something I had never really considered in depth before: the theory of mind. In the video, Michael mentions a case study where a child is told that a woman called Sally puts an apple in a box, inside a room with a box and a crate, and then leaves the room. Then another woman called Susie comes into the room and takes the apple from the box and puts it in the crate. When the child is asked where Susie would look for the apple if she came back into the room, the child says the crate - although it has been made clear that Susie was not in the room when the apple was moved and therefore would not know that the apple had been moved through simple logic.
VSauce's Michael suggests that this is due to children not being able to perceive that others might have different perceptions of reality to ourselves, and that everybody sees everything in the same way. He even suggests that although we can hypothesise about animals not seeing the world in the same way as us, they cannot do the same with regards to us perhaps. Whether  this is due to their having different brain structures to ourselves or due to them being able to experience the world using different - or slightly-altered versions of, - senses to ourselves (for example a butterfly being able to see the UV-section of the spectrum) we do not know.
In fact, perhaps (and this is just my opinion) it could be that children are born into this world with an all-knowingness that results from the essence of their souls - their very being itself. Before we are born (that whole topic is something best left for another post (or book)) it might be that we can simply experience every sense, even the ones that we might not think exist, and that due to this overwhelming all-knowingness we have none of the prejudices created through ignorance. Perhaps it is true that total ignorance is bliss, but some ignorance creates relativity. So, if you knew nothing about what this universe actually was, you wouldn't exist in any sense (until somebody conceived that person who knew absolutely zero in a thought or blog-post perhaps), but if you know everything through being able to experience everything through every sense possible, then you are never going to see anything relatively, since all the relative senses are also available to you and you will be able to see how they all relate to each-other: you must be omnipresent essentially. A being exhibiting such traits might be described as 'God' depending on the relative culture or faith-group you originate from. But of course, we know not everyone has the same senses - firstly because we all experience the world through different senses, secondly because the actual absence of sense is a sense within itself. Have you never wondered why as a child you were so much more creative? In fact in a test conducted, 98% of five-year olds were technically classed as creative geniuses (Genii perhaps? This word is very odd, but then spelling it as it is normally spelt enforces the concept of old Latin words becoming Anglicised through adding the ending 'es' for a plural and is therefore probably correct. That is how English originated anyway!), whereas just 2% of adults were in a similar experiment. These figures speak for themselves. Why though? Is it because society forces us to think in a certain way? Or is it perhaps because the five year olds had no tangible way to relate to the world. It has in fact been shown that the further away you are from something mentally or physically - the more creative you become in terms of describing or using it - the purest form is an abstract concept: the very definition of the intangible and the pinnacle of creativity itself. It is ironic since intangibility is in fact an abstract concept in itself. It seems to be that intangibility and abstract concepts are things which can only be described in terms of themselves: something which I will come on to later. In fact, the YouTuber Tommy Edison, who has been blind all his life is baffled by the concept of colour - however, perhaps this complete and utter confusion is part of what it takes to understand the world. People who can see can never experience what it must be like to have never know colour - since they will always have the concept clearly written into their memories. It is interesting - since it becomes a paradox to be able to understand the whole universe: you would need to be able to experience both all and none of the senses at the same time, which to the human brain is an impossible feat. Perhaps however, we only consider this an impossible feat because of the prejudices of the rules laid out for us by common 'logic'. What is to say that nothing and everything can't exist simultaneously. Isn't existence itself just another concept we talk about but never really understand?
Back to relativity and the idea of something which can only be described in terms of itself. In fact, everything we have ever known or will ever know fits this bill. You might say that this isn't true, but by definition it both is and isn't, depending on your relative standpoint.
Everything we know loops in a circle coming back to itself: the universe, logical arguments, physical concepts... the list goes on and on. They are the strange loops that Hofstadter talks about in Godel, Escher, Bach. In fact, take the concept of physical mass for example. What is it really? It is not determined by anything other than how much force needs to be applied for a set interval to make it start moving a certain distance per unit time. But of course, what is force defined in terms of? Mass and acceleration of course. Nothing else. We can only find out the mass of objects by comparing the relative properties of different objects - relative to each-other. It seems almost paradoxical, but it works - the universe itself is a paradox.
By the way, with reference to butterflies, how do they experience the colour given by the ultraviolet region of the spectrum? Is there not a clearly defined number of colours that exist - those that a healthy human can see? How can a butterfly see all those colours, and then some? How does the butterfly's brain process all those different colours. You then come to realise that, in fact, colour is merely an illusion created by our perception of reality - it is relative to the person experiencing the colour. Very much 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'-style. In fact, as has been mentioned in physical journals millions of times - the universe itself is all relative, depending on your standpoint. Nothing is ever the same to any particle in the universe - it cannot be by logical reasoning, since relative to any other particle, its physical states (mass, energy, velocity, direction) can never be the same, otherwise it would simply BE that particle (what would differentiate the two?).
Hope you enjoyed this post - there are a lot of things I wanted to say, but lost track of going off on lots and lots of different tangents. Perhaps though, I'll come back to them in more detail in later posts.

Relativity - MC Escher

Zero divided by zero?

What is the value of 0/0? At first glance you might think that this actually has the value of 0, considering that if zero is divided by anything it is still zero! However, this isn't actually really true as you will soon find out.

Consider the basic algebraic principles: they state that if one number or expression is equal to another, then you may apply basic arithmetic operations to one side as long as you mirror them on the other. For example, the expression 7=14/2 is mathematically true. Multiplying both sides by 2 will give you 7x2=14 which of course is also true according to our number system. More generally, if a=b then ac=bc as well.

We can also apply this principle to the expression 0/0. Say, we are assuming that we do not know the value of 0/0, so we will set the expression equal to the letter X. So now X=0/0. Applying the principle that multiplying zero by both sides will result in an equal expression, we do so, giving us Xx0=0. But wait a minute; the value of any number multiplied by 0 is equal to 0, so can't X take on an infiinte set of values, not just 0? Strange as it may seem this is mathematically true, however we can't simply leave the definition of 0/0 as "all real or imaginary numbers", since this goes against the rules for forming legitimate funtions.

If we define the function f(X)=X/0, we should be able to set Y=X/0. However, this means that again Yx0=X, which as we have seen means Y is equal to any possible number. This cannot happen however, since the function isn't valid. It is not a many-to-one or one-to-one function. It is in fact a one-to-many function meaning that in our system of mathematics it is undefined due to the fact that for the value X=0, we get more than 1 equally likely result. So, in actual fact 0/0 is not 0, it is undefined.

There are a few strange things to note however, about multiplying and dividing by 0. The first of these things is that if Y=X/0, then if X takes on any value other than 0, the resulting value for Y is infinity.

So for example, if X=3, then Y=3/0, which of course is infinity. This becomes stranger however when we take Y as infinity in terms of the algebra.

if ∞=3/0

∞x0=3

and

0=3/∞

Now, that last statement makes sense: if 3 is divided infinitely, then it will approach 0. This at least seems feasible in terms of convergence to a limit. However, what about the statment ∞x0=3. Haven't we already assumed that any number multiplied by 0 is equal to 0? Infinity however multiplied by 0 seems to be equal to an infinite number of differnent numbers, as with the value of 0/0. So does this not mean that since both expressions are equal to the same vast range of different values, we can set ∞x0=X, where X comes from the expression Xx0=0, so X=0/0 and has a range of different values, just as ∞x0 has. However, since both expressions may take on a range of different values, then at the same time as ∞x0 is equal to 3 in one case, X may be equal to any number, for example 4, in the other. We then come out with the strange result 3=4. Now, this proves at least that many to one functions cannot exist at the same time as our normal number system, since strange results occur. The only solution to the problem is to set 0=∞. Now everything begins to seem more rational. By saying this we can now say that ∞=3/0 is not valid in the first place, since any number is 1 divided by itself, and that value only. So the only acceptable value for ∞=X/0 is X=0 (or X=∞ since we are now assuming 0=∞). This now becomes a much simpler 1 to 1 function, which is acceptable in mathematics.

Our other problem of Xx0=0 now becomes one which is much easier to solve. If 0=∞ then Xx∞=0 and the only value that X can now take is 0. This also means however that strangely ∞^2=0.

In summary, the strangeness of the whole dividing by zero thing, seems to have a logical solution: that 0 and infinity are one and the same. If you have read Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, you will be familiar with the term strange loop - and this is one. A strange loop is essentially a figure which comes back to its original value or state, as you get further and further away from the original: a strange sort of paradox. It is a weird concept, but one which perhaps could be used to explain why the universe seems to curve in a strange way I have realised: since it has been said that the universe's conept of space is undefinable in physical terms since if you travel infinitely far away from the place you are at then after an infinite distance you will come back to position 0 (or back to where you started). But of course it would be impossible for us to ever reach that infinite distance, since we would need to be able to travel at an infinite speed, and one thing is for certain: the speed of light is the limit.

Drawing Hands by M.C.Escher - a drawing which embodies strange loops

Do you believe in fate?

We oftentimes hear about the suggestion that there is such a thing as "fate", "destiny", a "plan" for humankind. These words are tossed around in everyday speech in a myriad of different contexts, whether it be the often religious notion that God has a plan for humanity and that things were set out for us from the very start or perhaps the astrological notion that the stars dictate the way different sorts of people will act each day due to various 'correlations'. Personally, I don't put much faith in astrology, but others do and recently I have come to see reason for them to do so. Why, you may ask, would any extra-terrestrial happening dictate what I might feel like eating for breakfast tomorrow. Well, perhaps these things don't affect each other directly. It is the notion of cause and effect and there is often a misnomer about what people mean when they say two different events are related to each other. In the case of the positions of the planets and the stars, what is to say that certain movements of these objects in space could actually be related to the actions of is on earth, not because they themselves caused them, but because there is a meta-cause of both these things. It is the same problem as the idea of the number of drownings going up at the same time as ice cream sales. This does not mean that one causes the other, but that a higher-order cause was involved in bringing about both, namely the fact that both these statistics peak in the summer because more people go to the seaside when the weather is hotter and swim as well as being more inclined to buy a nice, cold ice-cream cone.

Consequently you might question what this higher-order cause might be, and it is a very good question to ask. Perhaps it is a very complicated cause to do with time. Time is one of the only things that links everything in the universe with everything else, among other theories of humans such as the idea of the three spacial dimensions. Perhaps, the pseudoscientific notion of biorhythms comes into play and means that each month the stars will be in certain positions and at the same time, purely on the basis of the regular rhythm of life, you will also be full of a certain hormone which makes you more likely to feel a certain way. In this sense looking at the stars to determine our fate is completely redundant, we may as well make less work for ourselves by analysing what time it is and our past history to determine a more accurate and less confusing view of why we might feel a certain way, rather than simply because 'the moon has passed close to the line of the equator'.

Everything in the world, and in the universe as a whole for that matter, obeys a regular rhythmic pattern dictated by the forces and objects around it. These ideas stem from the most basic physical principles we regard as 'most likely true based upon our current knowledge', and were discovered by scientists like Newton and Einstein among many many others. This is why we can predict the position of the earth at a certain time, or the position of another planet relative to the earth at that time. We would see it as strange to think that tomorrow Mars would suddenly, without reason, be moving much faster around the sun than it was today. We would have to see evidence for this, otherwise we would have to probably rethink the most basic, axiomatic principles governing the physical universe.

In fact this idea of these firstmost principles is very interesting. It is strange nowadays to use the word 'theory' to describe such things as gravity and atoms for example, since these 'theories' have become so well accepted, and seem so true that they are now almost always referred to as 'facts of life'. But of course, they are facts, but only in the realms of our own understanding. We have built other theories upon them and other theories came before them that they had to in some way agree with in order to be seen as credible. But the limit of our ability to test theories we make to determine whether they are true or not comes when we hit the barrier of what we are able to observe by any means about the universe around us. If we could in some way 'observe' time in some way then I am sure we would have a very different system of physics at the present moment. However much you think about it physics is at its roots a human explanation for something we do not fully understand and possibly never will. Just because something seems to fit, however well, with our understanding, in actuality it is never good enough to be regarded as real 'fact' since somewhere along the line, often at the very beginning we had to make an assumption, or a 'given statement' such as "all things fall down on earth". What is to say that they do? All that we have to observe is five basic senses at the end of it (not even in agreement with the number of recommended senses for something to be objective and not simply down to mere coincidence), and to be honest those alone will never be good enough to say for certain that all things fall down, or in fact that the objects and systems we interact with in everyday life are really what we see them as. At the end of it they are only viewed from our biased points of view. So where does the real truth lie? Well, in actual fact until the real truth - if there is one - is discovered for certain we have to believe every theory to be true in its own right, however crazy it might sound, since at the end of it everything is still only subjective to how credible we as a population think it to be, and that never equals certainty. For now however, I suppose our theories about life, mathematics, the universe and everything are all in actual fact true, since the concept of truth is, if you think about it, as much of a human invention as anything else. It belongs to the concept of logic and lies within the same thought system as Newton's laws of motion, Einstein's theory of relativity and the laws of thermodynamics and so all these things are true in that sense.

Coming back to my original idea about fate, there is a flaw in cause and effect - that is expressed as the very weird and wonderful notion of the human brain and consciousness. If everything, as most people believe it does, follows the currently accepted physical laws, then true randomness is in theory impossible, since everything must follow a rigid and structured system. By these premises that must mean that human thought is simply a direct result of the atoms and chemicals in our brains interacting with electrical signals in a complicated yet theoretically predictable manner meaning that fate has always been decided for us. This would also mean that if we were able to computer-generate a model of a human brain at a specific moment in time with every detail included, and programmed it using all the physical laws then this should mean the brain would work almost exactly as that of the person who's 'brain snapshot' was taken (this is a similar notion to modelling the atmosphere to predict the weather), give or take a few differences resulting from the absence of the external factors the person was subjected to: stimuli. But these differences are of course very important since in the long run they might add up to make for completely different paths of events. Of course, these stimuli would theoretically come from other predictable physical events and objects causing them which in theory could also be programmed into the computer. But of course these stimuli were in theory caused by other stimuli and so on and so forth until eventually you realise that to obtain an accurate model of what that person's brain would be doing at a certain time you would need to program the entire universe into the computer. Now, here comes the big problem - what about the computer itself, it of course is an external stimulus and part of the universe, so how do we program it into the equation? Well, as you may have guessed you would now need an infinite number of computer simulations each inside of one another to do this, much as you get with two mirrors placed in front of each other forming an infinite number of images within one another, which of course is impossible. But perhaps there is some truth in this: perhaps we ourselves are just one of an infinite number of sub and meta universes each inside each other in a never-ending chain. However, as we have seen with this theoretical computer simulation of the universe, there is perhaps a beginning. What could this beginning be? God perhaps? Well, again we are jumping to conclusions - my theory could possibly be false from it's very origins and therefore further reasoning would be futile, but it could just as well be true for all anyone knows. In a sense it is actually true by definition in the strange way I described before - true just as every other theory is. It just goes to show that seeing isn't actually believing, but the other way round. If you believe something, then it true by your own definition since the universe is a very, very relative place. What might be true for you may not be true for others. Because of my computer argument I can see how fate might simultaneously exist and not exist. To predict it all you would need would be a brain of infinite capacity - God as some might describe it. You might say this is impossible, but of course so was motion according to Zeno of Elea in his Achilles and the Tortoise paradox. What is impossible for someone may not be in another situation or train of thought for reasons that people are still trying to understand. That, I believe, is one of the beauties of life and consciousness.

Credit to Wikipedia for this image of an extract from the page on axioms... Just something to think about, is this truly true?

Credit to Godel Escher Bach among other things for inspiring me to write this article.

Computers don't always do what they're told to

Thinking about computers, we know that one of these days they're going to stop obeying Moore's law, at least for silicon microprocessors. Moore's law was a prediction made by a man called Gordon Moore in a paper published in 1965. It predicted that the number of transistors on processors would double every year. Surprisingly this law stayed true for a time long after the ten year period Moore initially suggested. However, unfortunately all good things must come to an end and Moore's law was no exception. Gradually the doubling period has lengthened to 18 months and in 2010 it became 3 years. There is of course a reason for this and these are the limitations of manufacturing silicon computer processors with too many chips. Firstly is the fact that, when we have too many tiny transistors in too small a space, they will generate immense amounts of heat, hot enough to burn themselves up, which we obviously don't want. The second limitation is what I'm interested in however, and that is that there is of course a limit on how small we can make transistors, since the universe is made up of atoms which are of a limited size!

This might not have been something Moore had thought of, or even a stage he thought it was possible to get to, for which this might become a problem, but the reality is that this problem is one which is actually very close to becoming a major issue for the future of computing.

But why is it an increasing problem to have transistors made up from smaller and smaller numbers or atoms. Surely we should be able to go down to one atom transistors theoretically, since in reality this is all that is needed to either let electricity flow, or not to let electricity flow.

But in reality our limits are set to five atoms. Why you may ask? Well, it is due to the unpredictability of electrons when we look at them closely. Something which a part of quantum theory.

Quantum theory, Schrödinger's cat, electron cloud - they all make up this weird and wonderful modern model of atoms. The main principle behind this theory is that, contrary to what you might think, electrons cannot only be thought of as particles, but a more accurate description is 'clouds' of space where the negative charge might be at any point in time, and has a certain probability of existing within. Yes, probability and physics. Not something I would've thought might go hand in hand, but apparently, electrons can be anywhere. It doesn't just stop there however. At this small a level, these electrons can demonstrate having equal probabilities of existing everywhere within this cloud, and since we have no method of determining the exact position of electrons at this small a level, we simply have to RELY on this theory of chance - making it really difficult to build computers with transistors this small. But of course we can use this to our advantage in fact, and this can be seen in the modern quantum counters, but that's a story for another day.

What I'm interested in is the fact that this underlying principle of atoms becoming unpredictable at a nanoscopic level is actually present throughout the world of probability and statistics. It's actually not a remote and unexplained scientific theory, but something we experience on a daily basis. Let me explain.

Think of the age old model of probability - flipping a coin to get either heads or tails. There is an equally likely probability of getting each outcome, as many of us know from the hours well spent working out probability problems in our maths workbooks at school. And as we know, often probability is actually correct. Plotting a graph of the cumulative outcomes of an infinite number of trials would eventually give us an eerily accurate 50% outcome for both events. However, as we flip less and less coins the probability will probably become less accurate, up to the point where you have only flipped two coins and can get only four outcomes: heads then tails, tails then heads, heads then heads, and finally tails then tails. Looking at these outcomes they are all equally likely. But only two of them fit the overall model of probability, with a 50:50 outcome for heads and tails. This means there is actually only a 50% likelihood of getting an accurate probability, making it very difficult to predict the number of heads and tails. However, it doesn't stop there, since things take a turn for the worse when you get into the realms of flipping just one coin. There are only two outcomes - heads or tails - and neither fits the conditions needed for our 50% probability! It's physically impossible! The only way to get half heads and half tails would be for both to happen at exactly the same time. Sounding familiar?

Now we see that the behaviour of electrons at smaller and smaller levels is weirdly similar. At a large level, the properties of substances are quite predictable - give or take some slight universal randomness - just as the number of heads and tails are after flipping a coin umpteen times. However, just as the probability becomes less and less 'probable' as we get less and less trials for heads and tails, with less and less atoms, it becomes less and less likely for us to be able to say where the electrons are and predict how the material will behave as a result. Finally we get into the realms of just a few atoms and the probability gets very weird and out of hand, just as it did when we had just two flips of the coin. Imagine this, but on the scale of electrons having an infinite number of equally likely possible locations they can take, rather than just two outcomes as with the coin. Since there are infinite outcomes and probabilities for the locations of electrons, the probability is very hard to predict even on a large scale. We can simply say a certain number of electrons at least will PROBABLY exist in certain 'clouds' as a result, using an equation called Schrödinger's equation, which is basically an equation like "number of trials divided by two" for the number of heads in a certain number of trials of a coin, except applied to an infinite number of locations for electrons. Finally we reach the one atom scenario, where predicting where the electrons are going to be becomes an impossible chore, without saying that the electrons are at each and every point at once. Perhaps this apparent physical impossibility explains the existence of alternate universes with infinite numbers of possible events. Perhaps it might one day prove the existence of God. Who knows? Well, maybe the scientists in another universe, but none in this one - most probably not at least.