Dear, You.
If you expect this article to reach a conclusion, you will be disappointed.
if we do not know what it is that we do not know, there is no way we can know what we know. so all that we can know, is that we do not know; and by the same effect, we still cannot know that.
As someone who must search for the meaning behind every apparent aspect of their life, I have always been astounded by the universally polar description of my interests. I find physics and other STEM fields to be fascinating, in the same sense that I have been a devoted painter for the majority of my life - and more recently, a ‘poet’. These fields, means of understanding, have always appeared to be direct opposites. The antithesis of each other... I disagree. Both science and art are human attempts to understand and describe the world around us. The subjects and methods have different traditions, and the intended audiences are different, but the motivations and goals are fundamentally the same. One of the most primitive innate needs of humans is to understand the world around us, and then share that understanding. We need to understand because we are terrified by things that are unpredictable, that don't make sense. So, is that it? Perhaps this interest in art and physics inspired within me is based on a core principle they share, their use as a lens, a language to understand the universe. But still I'm perplexed, if I crave a means to understand the universe, to know the unknown, why then is the fear of the unknown so integral to the human experience? It seems paradoxical. I know (using the term loosely, of course) that I do not seek the unknown out of fear, but I do so out of curiosity and fascination. Yet it seems far more logical for us to fear the unknown.
Fear is strange. Time is so finite, and the amount we can experience in this world is even more so, so being ruled by fear would appear to be an unnecessary waste. Or at least, any fear beyond what directly aids survival. Fear of the unknown may be a, or possibly the, fundamental fear. We fear the dark, heights, love, spiders... and death. All these rational or irrational fears have one baseline state in common, or underlying causal fear, their embodiment of or ability to result in the unknown. We cannot comprehend death, so we fear it and anything which could lead to death. We fear the dark, because it is the very definition of the visual unknown. It's completely primitive and instinctual. The animal brain in us wants to survive, and it does that better when it knows its surroundings, when there are no unknowns.
My introductory statement was inspired by the words of Donald Rumsfield:
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.
But- but Donald, if there are things we do not know we do not know, how could we possibly know the knowns? Could we not be incorrect in thinking we know the things that we know because we do not know the things we do not know? What if what we do not know is that what we know we actually do not know? Does this count as a tongue twister? Is it not true that using this unknown unknown logic we could only know that we do not know? Still, using that same logic could we even know that? Is skepticism, then the only known? Should we be skeptical of that? We should always be skeptical, right? Should we be skeptical of that? Should we be skeptical of that? Should we be skeptical of that? Should we be skeptical of that? Should we be skeptical of that? Should we be -
The paradoxes I keep reaching while trying to figure out why I love what I love, remind me of a more approachable idea. Perhaps I, Raina Hatcher, am just a fucking nut ball for paradoxes. Yes this probably just preludes the fact that the literal DEFINITION of a paradox is something that is unknown, so I should just revolve in endless circles,, but this is my article and I love paradoxes, so I am going to write about them.
My interests, in all these polarized categories of understanding, share one beautiful idea in common: they are riddled with paradoxes. Since I am struggling to decide which paradox warrants being mentioned first, I think we should talk about decision theory. I suffer from boundless decision paralysis - if decisions are mundane and the choice holds no valuable distinction between another choice, I have never understood how any specific choice could be made. If one focuses on the big picture, nothing can ultimately hold value other than time, as everything we hold valuable can be destroyed, and is dependent on time. Time is not an arrow marching forward though… we only perceive it as such since we are three-dimensional creatures who exist in four-dimensional space-time. So then I have to argue, time holds no value either - it is only given value due to the physical limitation of human beings creating our inescapable partial reality. This though may also not be true, at a deeper level all that holds value is information. But then again in an absurd world nothing holds value, so again no distinction can reasonably be made. But. Okay I'm getting ahead of myself, basically I am really quite terrible at making any sort of decision. Naturally, I was drawn to the paradoxes of decision theory:
Decision-making paradox: Selecting the best decision-making method is a decision problem in itself.
Fredkin's paradox: The more similar two choices are, the more time a decision-making agent spends on deciding.
Buridan's ass: How can a rational choice be made between two outcomes of equal value?
To discuss asses, we have to first mention free will. If an ass, a donkey, is equally positioned between two needs like a bale of hay and a pail of water... while being equally hungry and thirsty, it should die of hunger and starvation. But that seems illogical right? Why would an animal with free will (if there is free will: our Physicalism vs. Dualism article discusses this further) freely choose to die? If every instinctual tendency they have is to keep them alive? The thing is, though, no rational choice can be made between options of equal value. Some hard determinists deny that this ass is a true paradox, “It may be objected, if man does not act from free will, what will happen if the incentives to action are equally balanced, as in the case of Buridan's ass? [In reply,] I am quite ready to admit, that a man placed in the equilibrium described (namely, as perceiving nothing but hunger and thirst, a certain food and a certain drink, each equally distant from him) would die of hunger and thirst. If I am asked, whether such a one should not rather be considered an ass than a man; I answer, that I do not know.” OK Spinoza, I'm coming for you and I have equal amounts of food and water. Get ready to die. I would discuss Fredkin’s paradox at length, but if you're anything like me, you're completely aware of how impossible it is to decide between a croissant and an eclair. Or any two choices.
Past my better judgment, I’ll make a decision of what kind of paradox to discuss next: Classical Mechanics.
Arrow paradox: If we divide time into discrete 0-duration slices, no motion is happening in each of them, so taking them all as a whole, motion is impossible.
Paradox of place: If everything that exists has a place, that place must have a place, and so on ad infinitum. (subset of Zeno’s paradoxes)
Zeno’s paradoxes are cool, but being from 490 to 430 BC they can be slightly outdated. The arrow paradox, on the other hand, is really cool. It's especially cool because of how tied it is to the uncertainty principle: There is a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle, known as complementary variables, such as position and momentum can be known. In the arrows case, this certain pair would be position and momentum. (more about this in Where is Peru?) Shoot an arrow, as one does, and imagine as it flies. At any particular moment in time, the arrow would not be in motion. So. Uh. What? Anyway…
Returning to the actual purpose of this article, the dichotomy of art and science is endlessly apparent. Even within common phrases this dichotomy is apparent, you can have something down to a science, or you can raise it to an art. To quote Jitterbug Perfume: there is a long-standing argument about whether perfuming is a science or an art. The argument is irrelevant, for at the higher levels, science and art are the same. There is a point where high science transcends the technologic and enters the poetic, and there is a point where high art transcends technique and enters the poetic. But maybe that isn’t true. Maybe none of this is true. I mean, we can’t really know anything. We also can’t know that. Enjoy your day.
Love and Rage,
Raina
Side Note: Did I mention that the black hole information paradox, fermi paradox, double-slit experiment, schrödinger's cat, and basically every interesting physics category is riddled in paradoxes? I feel like this theory holds up pretty well, but if you would like to tell me why I love what I love, feel free to do so. My number is 3013182949. Yes I did just put my number on the internet. Enjoy your day.
If you expect this article to reach a conclusion, you will be disappointed.
if we do not know what it is that we do not know, there is no way we can know what we know. so all that we can know, is that we do not know; and by the same effect, we still cannot know that.
As someone who must search for the meaning behind every apparent aspect of their life, I have always been astounded by the universally polar description of my interests. I find physics and other STEM fields to be fascinating, in the same sense that I have been a devoted painter for the majority of my life - and more recently, a ‘poet’. These fields, means of understanding, have always appeared to be direct opposites. The antithesis of each other... I disagree. Both science and art are human attempts to understand and describe the world around us. The subjects and methods have different traditions, and the intended audiences are different, but the motivations and goals are fundamentally the same. One of the most primitive innate needs of humans is to understand the world around us, and then share that understanding. We need to understand because we are terrified by things that are unpredictable, that don't make sense. So, is that it? Perhaps this interest in art and physics inspired within me is based on a core principle they share, their use as a lens, a language to understand the universe. But still I'm perplexed, if I crave a means to understand the universe, to know the unknown, why then is the fear of the unknown so integral to the human experience? It seems paradoxical. I know (using the term loosely, of course) that I do not seek the unknown out of fear, but I do so out of curiosity and fascination. Yet it seems far more logical for us to fear the unknown.
Fear is strange. Time is so finite, and the amount we can experience in this world is even more so, so being ruled by fear would appear to be an unnecessary waste. Or at least, any fear beyond what directly aids survival. Fear of the unknown may be a, or possibly the, fundamental fear. We fear the dark, heights, love, spiders... and death. All these rational or irrational fears have one baseline state in common, or underlying causal fear, their embodiment of or ability to result in the unknown. We cannot comprehend death, so we fear it and anything which could lead to death. We fear the dark, because it is the very definition of the visual unknown. It's completely primitive and instinctual. The animal brain in us wants to survive, and it does that better when it knows its surroundings, when there are no unknowns.
My introductory statement was inspired by the words of Donald Rumsfield:
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.
But- but Donald, if there are things we do not know we do not know, how could we possibly know the knowns? Could we not be incorrect in thinking we know the things that we know because we do not know the things we do not know? What if what we do not know is that what we know we actually do not know? Does this count as a tongue twister? Is it not true that using this unknown unknown logic we could only know that we do not know? Still, using that same logic could we even know that? Is skepticism, then the only known? Should we be skeptical of that? We should always be skeptical, right? Should we be skeptical of that? Should we be skeptical of that? Should we be skeptical of that? Should we be skeptical of that? Should we be skeptical of that? Should we be -
The paradoxes I keep reaching while trying to figure out why I love what I love, remind me of a more approachable idea. Perhaps I, Raina Hatcher, am just a fucking nut ball for paradoxes. Yes this probably just preludes the fact that the literal DEFINITION of a paradox is something that is unknown, so I should just revolve in endless circles,, but this is my article and I love paradoxes, so I am going to write about them.
My interests, in all these polarized categories of understanding, share one beautiful idea in common: they are riddled with paradoxes. Since I am struggling to decide which paradox warrants being mentioned first, I think we should talk about decision theory. I suffer from boundless decision paralysis - if decisions are mundane and the choice holds no valuable distinction between another choice, I have never understood how any specific choice could be made. If one focuses on the big picture, nothing can ultimately hold value other than time, as everything we hold valuable can be destroyed, and is dependent on time. Time is not an arrow marching forward though… we only perceive it as such since we are three-dimensional creatures who exist in four-dimensional space-time. So then I have to argue, time holds no value either - it is only given value due to the physical limitation of human beings creating our inescapable partial reality. This though may also not be true, at a deeper level all that holds value is information. But then again in an absurd world nothing holds value, so again no distinction can reasonably be made. But. Okay I'm getting ahead of myself, basically I am really quite terrible at making any sort of decision. Naturally, I was drawn to the paradoxes of decision theory:
Decision-making paradox: Selecting the best decision-making method is a decision problem in itself.
Fredkin's paradox: The more similar two choices are, the more time a decision-making agent spends on deciding.
Buridan's ass: How can a rational choice be made between two outcomes of equal value?
To discuss asses, we have to first mention free will. If an ass, a donkey, is equally positioned between two needs like a bale of hay and a pail of water... while being equally hungry and thirsty, it should die of hunger and starvation. But that seems illogical right? Why would an animal with free will (if there is free will: our Physicalism vs. Dualism article discusses this further) freely choose to die? If every instinctual tendency they have is to keep them alive? The thing is, though, no rational choice can be made between options of equal value. Some hard determinists deny that this ass is a true paradox, “It may be objected, if man does not act from free will, what will happen if the incentives to action are equally balanced, as in the case of Buridan's ass? [In reply,] I am quite ready to admit, that a man placed in the equilibrium described (namely, as perceiving nothing but hunger and thirst, a certain food and a certain drink, each equally distant from him) would die of hunger and thirst. If I am asked, whether such a one should not rather be considered an ass than a man; I answer, that I do not know.” OK Spinoza, I'm coming for you and I have equal amounts of food and water. Get ready to die. I would discuss Fredkin’s paradox at length, but if you're anything like me, you're completely aware of how impossible it is to decide between a croissant and an eclair. Or any two choices.
Past my better judgment, I’ll make a decision of what kind of paradox to discuss next: Classical Mechanics.
Arrow paradox: If we divide time into discrete 0-duration slices, no motion is happening in each of them, so taking them all as a whole, motion is impossible.
Paradox of place: If everything that exists has a place, that place must have a place, and so on ad infinitum. (subset of Zeno’s paradoxes)
Zeno’s paradoxes are cool, but being from 490 to 430 BC they can be slightly outdated. The arrow paradox, on the other hand, is really cool. It's especially cool because of how tied it is to the uncertainty principle: There is a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle, known as complementary variables, such as position and momentum can be known. In the arrows case, this certain pair would be position and momentum. (more about this in Where is Peru?) Shoot an arrow, as one does, and imagine as it flies. At any particular moment in time, the arrow would not be in motion. So. Uh. What? Anyway…
Returning to the actual purpose of this article, the dichotomy of art and science is endlessly apparent. Even within common phrases this dichotomy is apparent, you can have something down to a science, or you can raise it to an art. To quote Jitterbug Perfume: there is a long-standing argument about whether perfuming is a science or an art. The argument is irrelevant, for at the higher levels, science and art are the same. There is a point where high science transcends the technologic and enters the poetic, and there is a point where high art transcends technique and enters the poetic. But maybe that isn’t true. Maybe none of this is true. I mean, we can’t really know anything. We also can’t know that. Enjoy your day.
Love and Rage,
Raina
Side Note: Did I mention that the black hole information paradox, fermi paradox, double-slit experiment, schrödinger's cat, and basically every interesting physics category is riddled in paradoxes? I feel like this theory holds up pretty well, but if you would like to tell me why I love what I love, feel free to do so. My number is 3013182949. Yes I did just put my number on the internet. Enjoy your day.
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