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When I looked up at the sky and for the first time considered the vast cosmic ocean that laid beyond, I was humbled while a wave of excitement overwhelmed me. The idea of space and its unlimited nature was stunning. It was beautiful. The realization of its existence opened up a new window to look at the world I found myself in. The view was lovely and for awhile, everything was elemental and untainted.
I thought of all the sands of all the beaches on Earth put together, and then compared the grain of one to the infinite mass. With that grain of sand, I proceeded to imagine something one-thousandth its size. In my head, that thing was a gross underestimation of Earth compared to the rest of the Universe.
For the next few days, the only thought that flitted through my head was of one topic, religion. The unbounded world which contained mine was the thing that led to me denouncing my religion. It suddenly seemed highly implausible that the Earth and the Sun and the Moon were created in 6 days while the creation of infinity went undocumented. And so, I got done with that whole business very quickly.
The most marvelous and notable thing that happened was that my realization inspired me to dream about the great and unconquerable beyond. In the words of Douglas Adams, it was actually strange to be anything at all. It was a queer feeling when I realized how everything was what it is because of chance. Carl Sagan taught me that we were all made of star-stuff, and that the atoms that we and the world around us are made of was produced in the hot furnaces in stars. This was because when stars die, they will explode and send their enriched guts of elements more complex than hydrogen and helium scattering across the Universe.
And just by luck, I and everything that I have observed and experienced came to be.
It was awhile after that I thought about the following: the Universe is infinite, and if the mind can comprehend this, is the mind also infinite? If the mind itself is infinite, does that mean that space exists in a metaphysical world can be compressed into a highly flawed and confined physical space?
Here's another thing about space: when it opens a new window for you to look at life, it changes how you look at literature as well. Books became this bizarre and odd little thing that carried obscure symbols that had no value to anybody other than ourselves. The worlds that are conjured up by certain books suddenly seemed so plausible and real as well. Given the enormity of space, does there not exist a small chance that science fiction worlds are somewhere out there?
I've also been able to better appreciate metaphors that involve the cosmos. My favourite metaphor to space was composed by the scientist Lawrence Krauss. I am unable to quote what the said, but I will paraphrase it in my own rugged and unpoetic way:
You and the world inside your head exists as a planet. In this planet, everything is well and everything is right. Things make sense and things seem to be right where they are supposed to be. When you happen to like someone, you'll decide to see what things are like on her planet. You'll decide to take the plunge, bravely, foolishly even. You leave your planet, and you leave yourself vulnerable to the cold and harsh darkness of the universe. When you look back, you realize that its far too late to turn back and that the only way to go was towards her planet. As you approach this foreign planet, you're greeted by this immense feeling of warmth and fuzziness. The world around you is foreign, but pleasant and lovely. Over the course of your visit, you've noticed things in her world that are absent in yours, and you realize that should you start to live without those things, you will quickly feel as if your world will no longer be complete.
And that's how space can be used to explain love and falling in it. Though now that I think about it, it seems like anybody needs to understand space to understand the damned metaphor.
Whenever I've felt down or bogged down by the motions of life, I just have to look up and remind myself that we are all part of something bigger, and our the issues in our lives are trivial when compared to everything that is.
+ Show Spoiler [personal note] +
I originally wrote pieces of the blog in my notebook, and pieced them together today. I understand that it's a deeply flawed piece of work, but blogs are what blogs are - thoughts of the imperfect mind. And of course, I had to end the blog with a poem. I feel like such a try-hard.
 
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It was awhile after that I thought about the following: the Universe is infinite, and if the mind can comprehend this, is the mind also infinite? Why would that be the case? If I can comprehend why an apple is red, it doesn't follow that my mind is also red. The reason why we can make sense of cosmology is because the physics involved (unlike, say, quantum mechanics) are to a very large degree similar to what we experience here on earth and we've evolved with the capacity to have a somewhat clear sense of what is going on here on earth. So if we can comprehend nature locally, we can to a very large degree comprehend the universe cosmologically.
Also, I can see the value of the 'view from the universe/nowhere' in helping us distance ourselves from petty problems etc, but we must be careful with that view, for the logical conclusion of it is nihilism, i.e. that ultimately nothing has value.
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On February 23 2013 01:06 Azera wrote:
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It was awhile after that I thought about the following: the Universe is infinite, and if the mind can comprehend this, is the mind also infinite? If the mind itself is infinite, does that mean that space exists in a metaphysical world can be compressed into a highly flawed and confined physical space?
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And that's how space can be used to explain love and falling in it. Though now that I think about it, it seems like anybody needs to understand space to understand the damned metaphor.
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You are making a flawed assumption throughout the course of these thoughts. The Universe (as we know it) is not infinite. The infinite cannot expand or contract, and the Universe is thus capable. The mind itself is not infinite - it too has limits and boundaries even if we cannot discern them. The hope of an entity to understand, the love that is capable of being rendered to another, the emotional impact of a loss, those too are finite.
The human mind cannot grasp, on a truly visceral level, the infinite. In all human experiences, there is a beginning and an end. So too do humans cast their world in this same image, and in some cases they are right - sortof. There is a beginning of a period of time, when first the monoblock singularity exploded out and expanding came to create the universe that we see, in which expansion and entropy eventually shall rule the day and it shall contract in heat death. Perhaps into another monoblock. Maybe a system of black holes, all eventually cannibalizing each other until again all is a point mass.
Or maybe the Hubble Bubble will burst, and like dreams of ether in the holographic reality we will cease to be while our energy is transferred into surrounding universes.
Cosmology is only a few steps removed from poetry.
Time may be infinite. Maybe. Existence, duration, I'm not sure. I only experience time in a single linear fashion, and I cannot experience all of it - I began, I lived, I will end. Anything further implies the existence of the divine, of matters of a soul, of experiences outside that which can be weighed, measured, and found wanting. As far as I am concerned, all that exists, all of reality, could be condensed to that which I can see, hear, or touch - that which I can directly experience. Anything else is conjecture - it may be true, but in what way does it matter to me?
Thinking about grains of sand and the immense insignificance of not only myself, but of all humankind in the scale of epochs of universal time is all well and good, but in the end it boils down to - You don't matter. Your country doesn't matter. Your species doesn't matter. All will be ashes and dust. Nothing will survive. And that kind of thinking gets way to depressing way too quickly. It makes life pointless, meaningless, and denies the individual the ability to cast forth defiance to the wind and proclaim that meaning and purpose does exist, at least in this life time and on this scale. Stars live and die, planets tumble through expansive space, but for these small years, in this small area, there exists someone that will have an impact, no matter how small, on the universe around them.
Of course, if you follow something along the lines of the butterfly effect, maybe then that could be the one being of the species that somehow has an impact on the whole.
Then again, reverse your navel gazing. Instead of looking out at how BIG everything is compared to you, look at how small everything is compared to you. Quantum foam.
Y'know, reading your blogs gets to be like watching Flynn knock on the sky. Shouldn't you be enjoying some chicken rice while studying for entrance exams?
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On February 23 2013 02:25 Sauwelios wrote:Show nested quote +It was awhile after that I thought about the following: the Universe is infinite, and if the mind can comprehend this, is the mind also infinite? Why would that be the case? If I can comprehend why an apple is red, it doesn't follow that my mind is also red. The reason why we can make sense of cosmology is because the physics involved (unlike, say, quantum mechanics) are to a very large degree similar to what we experience here on earth and we've evolved with the capacity to have a somewhat clear sense of what is going on here on earth. So if we can comprehend nature locally, we can to a very large degree comprehend the universe cosmologically. Also, I can see the value of the 'view from the universe/nowhere' in helping us distance ourselves from petty problems etc, but we must be careful with that view, for the logical conclusion of it is nihilism, i.e. that ultimately nothing has value.
I think the counterargument is a lot simpler. Simply put we can't comprehend infinity. We just have some rough approximation, or idea, of infinity as something that goes on without end. But we cannot fully grasp, all at once, the image of an infinite sequence (for example).
Even if we imagine a circle, and reason that we can go around it an infinite number of times, we cannot conceive of actually going around it an infinite number of times, or imagine measuring its circumference an infinite number of times.
Its amazing to think about for a while, as you imagine the universe stretching endlessly outward. Then at some point, you realize your brain is finding it more and more difficult to expand outwards, while keeping a sense of all which was inside the expansion. Then your head starts to hurt and you stop. This is not what I envision as the mind "being able to comprehend the infinite"  .
For that matter we still don't understand how to solve Zeno's Paradox (Calculus doesn't apply to reality, just mathematics)
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I would argue that most humans cannot even comprehend numbers on the order of magnitude of 10^2 or so, let alone infinity.
Try picturing a room of 200-300 of some every day object-let's say, apples. Unless they're organized neatly into rows and columns it's almost impossible to judge or imagine reasonably accurately the dimensions of a pile of that many apples.
On February 23 2013 08:17 radscorpion9 wrote:
For that matter we still don't understand how to solve Zeno's Paradox (Calculus doesn't apply to reality, just mathematics)
Not so sure I follow here.
How exactly does calculus (or mathematics, for that matter) not apply to reality?
Mathematics can easily be used as a model of reality, or to aid in the creation of one. In fact, that's how most science explains reality-using models.
I also fail to see how Zeno's paradox (although there's at least two-the ones I'm thinking of are the arrow paradox and the tortoise one) is not understood or has not been explained. Both make faulty assumptions about time.
Looking at the way the tortoise paradox is phrased, all we're really doing is taking a finite distance and cutting it up into an infinite number of (small) pieces. Then, we're adding them all up again. Obviously this is just doing some operation and then reversing it, so of course when we are done adding we are left with what we began with in the first place.
More interesting than this Zeno paradox is Thomson's lamp, IMO.
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i specifically told you not to use the word "frisson"
son i'm disappointed in you
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This is a wonderful piece. Beautiful, moving, thought provoking.
I feel that humans not only have difficulty grasping the concept of infinity, but also the spectacle of what amazing planets and celestial phenomena could possibly exist.
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On February 23 2013 13:29 sam!zdat wrote:
i specifically told you not to use the word "frisson"
son i'm disappointed in you
Fine, I fixed it.
Thanks to everybody who replied anyway  As I said, this blog is highly flawed.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.minus.com/i9zyywI4IBRVU.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.minus.com/igBrSuh1ZQqYL.png)
