Being Too Quick to Judge: A Necessary Evil?

Relatively recently, I wrote a review on Goodreads of the book "The Secret Commonwealth" by Philip Pullman. I initially knocked the book a star. I thought it was a 4-star read. I had recently got into the habit of improving my snap judgments on things, under the impression that perhaps my life had been going slower than it should have thus far because of my self-perceived tendency to be indecisive. I had written reviews for Felix, the student newspaper of Imperial College London in the past, and one thing I learned was that it was almost the case that articles that were written quickly tended to be better received by the editors. After all, what was the point in attempting to condense complex ideas into something that people were reading for entertainment; or at least - if I did want to introduce those ideas, I should spread them over the length of the piece, diluting them like a very weak cup of squash, so that people's reading speed would match that of their comprehension, as would my writing speed match that of my own thinking and idea development.

However, I have realised that fast and decisive isn't always best. This realisation came when, a few weeks after reading the book, I realised that I had been mulling over a few of the ideas and characters introduced, with these things affecting my own life and thinking. I thought more deeply about some of the things that had been written and realised that I had overlooked many seemingly minor points, which were gateways to a deeper understanding of the ideas discussed in the story. I am willing to accept that this was perhaps me imposing my own interpretations on a piece of text, but I am more willing to give Philip Pullman the benefit of the doubt and accept that at least some of the things I thought about were intended.

Thus, I went back to my review and revised it from 4 stars to 5 stars. In hindsight, I realised that I had mostly not awarded the book 5 stars because it did not provide perfect gratification instantly upon finishing it. You could argue that this is the reason we have reviews in the first place: different individuals have different opinions, and literature - like any art - is open to interpretation and a far from static subject.

This idea of individuals having opinions is all well and good, but it can also take on a darker side when it materialises in the debate on freedom of speech. If you had to sum up the war going on between what tend to be older generations and younger ones, it would be described as the question of the extent of freedom of speech. Perhaps a better way to express this is - what is the meaning of freedom? One side of the debate believes that freedom of speech means that we should all be entitled to be able to say what we want, free of consequences, or some degree of that thought. The other side believes that the freedom means freedom of an individual to live a life free from hatred and judgement by others, thus speech has moulded into the more general idea of "expression", and by speaking about others we may be limiting those individuals' rights to express themselves. This idea presents itself in all the recent hot topics in the media: Brexit, mask wearing, and Zionism to name but a few. 

So who is right? Is being too quick to judge a poor trait, or one that is necessary in this world where we don't always have time to look into things too deeply? Is it the duty of an individual to spend time considering a subject to its fullest extent before opening their mouth, e.g. to express their views on another person or group?

It is clear that in certain situations, the human instinct to judge quickly is valuable and sometimes even necessary to our survival. If we see a lion in South Africa, we don't stop to consider whether this is a real danger - we make a decision and quickly. It's built into our systems, fight or flight being one form of this.

But it is also clear that there are times when our instinct to judge can harm others. If we see a beggar in the street, do we assume that they are taking drugs, lazy, or drunks just because of the way they look? The reality is that they might be, but they might also not be. But is it right for us to ignore the latter possibility? If that were the case, thousands of unfortunate people living on the streets today would not be receiving vital money, which - in some cases - might be the difference between a life of misery and one that is meaningful.

It is clear that there is no simple answer. Even when we do weigh up the possibility that our assumptions may be wrong, studies of human behaviour as detailed in the book "Thinking Fast and Slow" have demonstrated that our perceptions of probability are very often misguided.

In my opinion, the answer is that we should seek to improve ourselves and listen to others. If they tell us that we are judging too harshly, this is often a signal to sit back, take a moment, and reflect on whether our lines of thinking are based on solid evidence, or if they have been swayed through overexposure to one particular point of view, namely our own. But at the end of the day, we should not do ourselves down for being too quick to judge. Everyone makes mistakes. Indeed, the one person we should never be too quick to judge is very close to home - we should never be too judgemental of ourselves.

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.

Don't tell me, show me

“Do not simply tell people what happens in a story - show them”. This is a major pseudo-rule in story telling. Its what turns a series of random events into a story with a plot and individual interpretation.

However, a similar pattern comes up in scientific research. We see that when we are simply told a fact, we have learnt that fact. We are able to tell somebody that ‘A Jaffa Cake is actually a cake, not a biscuit’. Great. That’s great. But what is the significance of that statement? That is the important part. The fact is just the result.

It’s like being told that an interviewer has just rejected you for a job and when you ask why, you are told: ‘Because he wrote “Declined” on your application’. You’re not really getting to the root of the problem.

Unfortunately this is what happens a lot in science: people think that they become smarter by simply learning more and more pieces of information. But that’s all they are: pieces. In the Coursera course ‘Learning how to learn’, the tutors stress the importance of placing what you have learnt in some context: linking it to something. Otherwise, it is like having a small station in your brain that can never again be reached by your train of thought because there are no railway lines to it from other stations you have already discovered. You might even begin to forget about its existence given enough time.

Therefore in science, what is really important is the background story - the set of logical deductions that lead from a simple statement (an axiom) to an often seemingly complicated scientific result, such the reason as to why resistances add in series and follow a different formula in parallel.

There is more than one way to reach the solution and having lots of different methods helps you to really internalise what you are learning and make it seem more natural.

Different paradigms through which we can view the world can often fall under discrete categories due to common patterns in each of them. For example, artists might use the visual senses to convey abstract concepts such as emotions, whereas a poet would our capacity to form mental imagery. The ultimate result is that they want to convey a particular feeling: the state of mind they were in when they splashed their thoughts down onto the page. Since not everyone’s brain is the same, we can’t simply clone and transplant relevant neurons from one person to another, since two different people’s brains (mathematicians for example) may appear to work in the same way from the outside, but inside that black box the scenario may be wildly different. Therefore when we paint, draw, write, or use mathematical language among myriad other things, we are translating our thoughts so that others can read the medium and try to recreate a similar form of the idea.

This is why different learning approaches work for different people: we try to find one which clicks with the way our brain is structured, in a similar mode to tuning an analogue radio using a dial, until we find a frequency that resonates. Before that there may be utter confusion, but at the slightest turn of that dial, everything suddenly slides into place and out of that chaos there comes clarity. This is analagous to that moment when things 'suddenly make sense'. Is there a way to consistently recreate understanding therefore? Perhaps, but I suspect not - since understanding is a very individual thing. But we can become better at recongnising the things that help us to understand, and even expand the ways in which we understand in order to learn new things. Many people simply rely on the basing new things they learn on models of subjects they were good at or loved when they were young. As they get older they get more lazy and don't want to find new ways to learn, preferring to stick to the pattern of mental streets they have already carved out for themselves.

In fact I seem to be closer to understanding what I was thinking about when I set up this strange blog. Though I may have not previously been able to put it into words. Much of this blog is about finding the little similarities across wildly different and sometimes very abstract and philosophical subjects which is very characteristic of this universe of patterns in which we live. For example, strange loops have sparked many interesting thoughts in the past especially, and I hope to find many more links between the things we observe in the future.

I hope what I said resonated with you.

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.

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?

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

Relative Matters

While reading about the amazing NASA New Horizons Space Probe (which is due to arrive at Pluto in less than a year!) I came across a webpage tracking the movement of the probe. On the webpage (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/whereis_nh.php), the software NASA uses to produce nice visuals of where the probe is and other information about it includes a special statistic: heliocentric velocity.
Now, initially I didn't know what this was, but looking at the description given:

Heliocentric Velocity. The current position graphic also notes the spacecraft's heliocentric velocity - its speed with respect to the Sun - in kilometers per second. One kilometer per second is equivalent to 0.62 miles per second, or 2,237 miles per hour.

This might seem like a pretty normal statement, but think about it carefully. If there has to be a central reference point for this probe's velocity to be measured from, then that must mean that all velocities are relative (which according to the theory of relativity, they are). This must also mean however, that the sun has a velocity, and that velocity is relative to other large stellar objects, or even things as small as atoms perhaps, which have a definite position in our universe. This makes sense, in earthly terms, where we measure our velocity relative to what can be regarded for all purposes as the stationary ground.
But, say that there existed just one object in the universe, with no other atoms around to help measure its velocity. Would that object ever have velocity? Actually, wouldn't that mean that even if a force was exerted on the object (somehow without another object causing it) that the object would seemingly simply be as good as stationary, since there would be no reference points to measure any acceleration in its movement from. Do not be fooled by the fact that if you were standing next to the object, that you would see it moving away from you, since this assumes that you would also be in this completely empty universe, meaning that there are now two objects which can be measured relative to each other (you and the object).
But of course, when I said that a force was caused, and implied that this happened without another object causing it, then this would be impossible. In fact, the only way for that object to have a force effected on it, would for it to split in two (in an unexplained and spontaneous explosion) and so resulting in two parts of the object having pushed away from each-other with equal force. Of course, we could not actually measure how large that force was in terms of our standard units since that would mean that we were there as well, and would be measuring the forces relative to the current system of our universe, which is wrong since the single object (now dual-object) universe is a different universe with different physical rules of relativity - our universe contains a complex set of objects relative to each other not comparable to that universe.
The way our universe is comparable to that single-to-dual object universe is that they seem to both have started in the same way. Perhaps our universe started as a very similar object. Of course, since that object was the only thing that existed, there was nothing to compare it to and so it existed relative to itself both in size and motion: meaning in fact that it had infinitely small size and motion (or infinitely large depending on how you want to think about it). This concept seems similar to the concept of a singularity - the thing that our universe is thought to have evolved from. Perhaps physical laws and rules emerged at the beginning of our universe in a similar way to the object splitting in that alternative universe, and did so for no apparent reason (this concurs with the spontaneous expansion idea of the Big Bang Theory). Of course, maybe I can now attempt to explain the complicated notion of 'non-existence' outside the universe: perhaps this simply implies that outside the boundaries of relative relationships between matter in our universe, nothing exists since there is simply nothing to measure it relative to, since that space is immeasurable relative to objects in our universe and we cannot simply get out a ruler and say how large objects outside the 'boundaries of the universe' are or how fast they are travelling.
This relativity might also explain (in a convoluted manner) the deveptively-simple, ever-so-weird concept of gravity. The explanation might be that gravity is simply a result of the relative equilibrium of all the particles of the universe having been disturbed by that unknown force which caused the Big Bang to begin. Ever since then, there has been an imbalance in that equilibrium, however since the universe is so complex and matter-full, the particles were unable to regain their original structure (the structure they held when they were a singularity) and have simply been trying to "locally compensate". What I mean by this is that instead of the whole network of the particles in the universe simply returning to their original relative positions, they have formed 'mini equilibria' in certain areas of the universe, such as on that lovable place we like to call earth, or even in our galaxy as a whole. Were every single particle in the universe to suddenly become aligned in such a way that they might be able to come together again to reform overall equilibria, that might be more favourable, and perhaps it has happened before (a la the theory of repeating universes: where universes continually form and collapse upon themselves to form cycles of singularities). Perhaps, this will happen again in the future? Nobody knows whether it will however, and if it will, when it will happen? Or is time, in this context, strangely relative as well? I leave that question to you.

Credit to:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/whereis_nh.php
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/#.VBSbcMJdVA0

The never ending end and the means justified

One question we may ask ourselves often is, 'is what I'm doing really worth doing?'. Think about the last time you might've thought this way, perhaps it was at school or at work and you were wondering whether your job or revision methods were the best way forward.

Well, I have a little piece of advice for you. STOP listening to yourself for a while and just go with it. As much as we might hate to think otherwise, life is unpredictable and unexplainable both physically and philosophically. We can never really know whether what we class as 'consciousness' is really our own beings making moral decisions, or whether we are mere spectators in the grander scheme of things, witnessing this madness through the senses and thoughts of another.

My point is however, not to try to convince you that you are not a real person, it is to tell you that since you might be you should try to achieve the most out of your life. How do I do this you may ask? How do I live the 'ideal' life?

In truth I was actually tricking you slightly, since I would like to say, and I know this for certain, that there is no more of an ideal life than the one you are living as you read this article. The very experience of your unique life pathways in itself is a wonderful thing and the emotions and experiences, good or bad, that you encounter along the way are also unique and should therefore be treasured. It's all part of being human - a richness that no other species will probably ever experience. Put this down to what you will but the statement remains.

Now, there is one thing you can do to improve your life. It may seem counter-intuitive but I think that it is the truth. That is to stop worrying about changing your life drastically and do things step by step. The most important thing is to recognise that you are never going to be the same one day as the next. You are, however you might feel, a different person every new year, every new day, every new moment. Scientifically we might attribute this to neuroplasticity and the ability of the brain to change its structure as we experience new things.

If you are still sceptical, just imagine the day you were born. Are you the same as you were then? No, of course not, but you didn't feel these changes coming on. In fact you are actually made up of a completely fresh set of atoms and particles to those that came out of your mother's womb.

Now think back to when you were just a child, aware, but still not mature. Mature. You know you became it as you grew older, but was there one day when you just woke up and found yourself to be mature? Of course not, maturity was a gradual process due to you understanding more and more about the world. And it hasn't stopped for you yet, no of course it hasn't. You are still developing second by second and there is nothing you can do to stop yourself from changing.

But you do of course have a say in the way that you change. You can change for better or for worse, depending on how you choose to think, act and say the things you do. Each small action will lead to a small change, a fact that you could use to your advantage in accomplishing your life goals.

If you want to stop smoking for example, gradually start doing more and more things to contribute towards this ultimate goal. Eventually you will come to a point where you have overcome your addiction and this is the same for everything. All things are on a continuous spectrum and nothing can be fixed in stone, just as the universe in itself is not really that fixed.

If you just keep in mind how much you want something, those clouds of dreams and aspiration will condense into a real form and you WILL accomplish your goal.

The end never comes before the means and the means will not always seem like they are working, because the changes come so gradually. Rome was not built in a day and neither will you be.

                               

How to improve your life with a 'P'...

I've thought up a little system composed of ten words. These words describe and include ten things that apply to everyone in the world, and will make your life better if you improve on them. I know it is quite random, but oh well.

1) Politeness - be nice to other people!
2) Punctuality - be on time, don't be late and get yourself organised!
3) Procrastination - stop putting off tasks you should be doing. It will make life much easier.
4) Personal Hygiene - this is obviously essential...
5) Prayer - may only apply to those who are religious and actually pray, but communication with a divine being is proven to make you feel a lot more satisfied!
6) Priority - if you get these straight, then workloads and commitments seem to sort themselves out...
7) People skills - your social life is obviously important, and being able to communicate with others effectively is a must.
8) Perseverance - when you get things done there is that great sense of accomplishment.
9) Perspiration - this can refer to both exercise (keep a healthy lifestyle), and working hard in whatever you do, to do it the best you can.
10) Personality - probably the most important! Be yourself and be a good person!

Improve on these ten 'P's and I can guarantee everything will seem a lot better!

Arrogance about Knowledge

Of course, many of us in the world have often said: 'Oh, I know all about that' and therefore don't listen to what others have to tell us. We can't blame anyone for that to be honest, but of course, we can blame them for not trying to improve their attitude. Here is a story about a man who did just that.


One day two men from the same university with exactly the same experience decided they wanted to learn how to draw. They decided they wanted to learn how to draw, so they went up to an art teacher who decided to start giving them both private lessons in drawing. The day approached and finally arrived and the two men went up to have their first lesson.

"Okay", started the teacher, "Today I'm going to teach you the very basic drawing techniques."
"Oh", said the first man,"I know all the basics, I want the more advanced stuff!"
"Fine, I'll teach you tomorrow instead." said the teacher, and the young man went away.
The other man however, although he thought he knew what the teacher was going to be teaching him, listened intently and found that his drawing improved, and that not only was it the techniques that helped him, but the different view on drawing and the experience that the teacher had.
The two men continued their lessons for about half a year, the first man walking out of the lessons whenever he thought he knew everything.
Finally the time came when the teacher asked them both to draw a picture using all of the techniques they had used this term and compare it to their previous artwork to see how much they had improved.
Both men spent ages on their drawings and in the end presented their artwork.
The teacher found that both were very good, but the young man's was somewhat generic and cliched. However the other man's was of the same standard, but much more original and out of the box.

That shows us that what makes us stand out from the crowd is not knowledge but experience and the willingness to listen again and again. That is what makes people in the world interesting: the mix of skill and originality through experiences with life and other people. So remember. Successful people are always successful listeners.