Posts

Showing posts from March, 2020

Why 1+1=2 is beautiful

Image
1+1=2 Yes. And? I bet this was one of the first equations you wrote down. Without understanding it much, we would scribble it down on a piece of paper, and it would usually be followed by 1+2=3 or something of the sort. But there's much more to this seemingly simple equation than we could care to think when we were four. Firstly, what is '1'? My philosophy teacher defined it as the existence of a single quantity.  Okay, so what is 'quantity'? Quantity means 'number', since a 'number' is just a name we assign to an arithmetical quantity. So...what is 'number'?  This is the ultimate brick wall humanity hits. You see, we invented the concept of number  as a way to describe the quantities we perceive, and somehow the universe works perfectly according to this system we invented. Take 𝜋, for example. Most of us know that it is approximately 3.14, that it is irrational and (most importantly), it is the ratio between the circumference (

Do I exist by chance?

Image
This is a question all humans will ask at least once. Some people put it aside for the rest of their lives, and others make it the aim of their lives to find an answer to it. Why do I exist? Pretty good question. Many people have written articles on this before focusing on the idea that humanity will one day cease to exist, so why would a human life be worth living in the first place? These arguments would be deemed correct by a number of philosophers, such as Rene and Plato. Undeniably, we will all die. Life is not guaranteed (take a stillborn child, for instance), but death is. They insinuate, just as did Plato and Rene, that despite the natural curiosity of a human being, his actions are worthless, because a human's existence will cease at a point in time. Nevertheless, this argument can be refuted.  Aristotle believed that humans were ‘curious by nature’, as did Plato. However, when it comes to a human being infinitesimally small and insignificant because he is ju

In an infinite universe...would there be infinite 'me'?

Image
This question might seem ridiculous at first, but it follows a process of thought. The other day I was talking to a professor and he believed that if the universe is infinite, not only will there be another 'him', there will be infinite copies of him. The reasoning: "the probability of another 'me' existing in the universe is not zero, even if it is seemingly very low. So as the number of trials tend infinity, the probability of at least a single copy of 'me' existing again increases and increases. Eventually, we reach a number of trials/'spaces' that the probability of at least one other of me existing is so high...there will have to be another copy of me certainly. Put another way, matter can arrange itself in different ways (quantum states). But the number of different arrangements is not infinite. So after a certain amount of space, the combinations will start to repeat over again. I (as a person) and my entire life (as a sequence of events)

The Beginning

This blog has a beginning, like all other things: life, intelligence, thoughts, questions. Or maybe not like all things...we'll see this in future posts. The purpose of this blog will be to offer aspiring physicists and philosophers a platform on which they can question, challenge and offer their own ideas (or as we call them, 'shower thoughts') So let's go and question...