Relatively Relative

We (humanity), have invented many ways to measure things, but what is it that we are really doing when we measure something?

To explore this question, we start by drawing a dot on a blank paper. How big is that dot? To find out we would probably compare it with something that has dimensions outside of the paper like a ruler or the size of the paper itself. Within the paper surface though, there is no indication of the size of the dot. If we draw a figure next to this dot, suddenly we can define the dimensions of this new shape by the number of dots that fit into it. We see that size has meaning when compared to something else, but not before.

Similar to this, a single object cannot be measured as moving in any way. Motion has to be relative to something else for it to have meaning. If we add another object, we can measure the distance with which these two objects have moved towards or away from each other (or rotated in relation to eachother). We would of course have to measure this movement with the length of one of the objects involved in the system though unless we had something with which to compare.

What about measurements not based on distance? Time comes to mind and just as before, it would not have meaning without comparing it to something. If all events are happening randomly, there is no way we can use to tell someone how long something is taking. What we have to do in this case, is to add something repetitive or predictable. Then we will have something to anchor our time measurements on. Something like the recurring seasonal changes or the rotation of the earth making the sun set. We can start thinking in comparative terms, like "this usually takes about as long as this sand takes to get to the bottom of this container".

After having something to base our measurement on, we can create a unit of measurement by naming this measurement something, e.g. "...and there we rested for 3 sands before moving on...". This would then have to become a standard among the people with whom we want to be able to communicate using relative measurements to this unit. If we meet other groups who compare things differently we would have to define conversions and have tedious discussions on who's unit is better. One unit may even be more convenient for a certain situation but not for another.

Today, we have scientific definitions of units that define exactly what they mean based on natural laws, but we cannot get away from the fact that somewhere deep down they are still just comparisons. Luckily we do not have to worry about those exact definitions to use the units in normal life. If we did, then I missed celebrating my 10^18th period of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfinelevels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom, and that would be sad...

Influential Information Flow

”He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

When you want to convey thoughts to someone you translate it into speech or body language. The latter might even happen unconsciously and most of the time you do not have to concentrate on getting a message out unless you are learning a new language. Usually some of these signals and sounds you make will be picked up by another person through his/her different senses. Spoken language will be received by hearing, while body language might be picked up through sight or touch. These signals will be interpreted by the other person and translated into thought again.

Communication is seldom (if ever) perfect, as we can se from all the misunderstandings around us. Languages are too inexact to describe what we mean sometimes. We also make mistakes and try to interpret things from our own view. Another thing that is very important when we convey information is context. The speaker might know something that the listener does not know, which makes the recipient of the message interpret something differently than he was meant to. Speaking different languages is an extreme example of this, where you can only rely on trying to get your message across through body language or some common words.

Another thing that affects communication is when the listener filters the information. An emotion, like anger, could act like a filter and make us less willing to receive whatever is being said. Being tired or not being interested in the topic will also act as filters. Filters might not stop all communication, but a lot more information gets lost on the way or even misinterpreted because of different mental states.

All communication works this way, sending thoughts between people. Sometimes (e.g. when watching television) the thoughts go only in one direction, but most of the time thoughts flow back and forth between people all the time.

Not only communication gets interpreted by the brain. In fact everything that our senses pick up is input. Because everything we feel gets translated into thoughts, our thought patterns get affected by what happens around us. From this we can also draw the conclusion that if there are people around us we will also be affected by them. Because their actions are a result of their thoughts, this would mean that we are influenced by other people's thoughts indirectly. This is not as frightening as it seems most of the time, as you would also influence them back at the same time (except in the case of one-way communication). The filters also come into play—we are more susceptible to influence from people we like for example.

What would happen if these filters were removed? Would thoughts then flow freely between everyone? One could theorize that in that case two different personalities would slowly change towards each-other and converge on a single point. It would be more complex in a huge population and you would get background noise in the form of environmental input, but our filters could actually be what creates our individuality.

The Chicken and the Egg

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? There seem to be and endless supply of people bringing this question up in different contexts, and each time it is expected to be a question without an answer. This could be true, but it might not as you will see. The question does not have a one ultimate answer, as it depends heavily on the viewpoint one takes when answering.

If we look at it from a purely historical point of view, eggs have been around at least since the dinosaurs were around more than 65 million years ago. Back then no chickens existed as far as we know, so from this viewpoint one can easily answer that the egg came way before the chicken.

Another viewpoint would be from a pure linguistical point. Did the word “egg” exist before the word “chicken”, and if it did, did it mean the same thing as today? This is a very hard question to answer since a language evolves, and tracing the history of a word might gradually change it until it is another word. One would then have to define exactly how much a word is allowed to change before we decide that it is a different word. Of course, if the word existed with another meaning before, we could probably find a point where the meaning changed to what it is today. I do not have a good answer from this line of thought, but if anyone has researched the origin of the words “egg” and “chicken” in detail, please share your findings.

Dropping the language details, lets move backwards in time. If we start with a chicken today it will have come from an egg, which will have come from a chicken and so on. We will at some point reach an ancestor which we would not call a chicken, but lets not dwell on that. This chicken ancestor came from an egg as well, which was probably produced by another chicken ancestor. Somewhere along the line we would reach a living organism that created a copy of itself without an egg (very far back), which at some point evolved into creating protection for its offspring during its first phase. This would then mean that that organism predated the egg as such, and thus the question would be that the chicken came before the egg, although it would an extremely different chicken from the one we have today.

Of course the above reasoning relies heavily on evolution in its explanation. If one were to believe in creationism, then according to Pastafarianism either the chicken or the egg was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. This view would actually leave the question as cryptical as the question probably was is intended to be.

So what have we learned here? This could be a very simple question or a very hard one. Whatever your answer to the question you will probably be right from your own perspective, and there are probably more views than I have listed here. This is very apparent when it comes to this question, but the same can be said on almost any question. The viewpoint you take when answering the question will affect the way you interpret it and thus the answer to it.