We were meant to study science
As far as mental health is concerned, for some of us, talking our problems through is helpful. Not so much for the rest of us. Of course, the kind and intensity of problems we deal with vary greatly. But they mostly center around regulating emotions. My social media feeds and the conversations I hear everyday are all flooded with emotions. Arguments, rants, and other forms of conversations that are rife with emotion. It led me to understand that most people’s disappointment usually just stems from their expectations not being met.
I am often comforted a lot lesser than I am plagued. Therapy didn’t do much for me since I realized too late that I didn’t speak the same language as my therapist. I, am of course, not referring to natural language. But the words she used to console me hit a wall. And I could never quite figure out how to comfort myself.
I am also often repelled by conversations that rely too much on emotion. This is not to say that emotions or their expression are bad. I have no opinion on what people should do with their emotions. I simply find myself lacking whatever you must be equipped with to participate in these conversations. When I stopped to think whether or not this meant I was emotionally dead, I realized I was not. If anything, I was emotionally overstretched in the past. Over time, I must have gotten familiar with the fact that emotions or intentions can be unpredictable, unreliable, and fluctuating constantly, given they aren’t grounded in anything solid. And from then on, I started looking for something more stable to invest my mental resources in.
One of my favourite researchers says on his LinkedIn: “I like zen and statistics. I think they’re different approaches to the same problem: handling uncertainty in the world.” I didn’t go into statistics expecting it to help me with my mind, but it did anyway. I love numbers. More specifically, I love the reliance of human minds on numbers. We need data to make claims and to define growth/decline, we need measurements to build, and no explanation is necessary for why we need to keep track of time and money. Zeroing in on data, we see how it has this powerful capacity to tell stories like no other. Different people interpret data in different ways and each is more fascinating than the next. In fact, here are some of my favourite examples of using data to get across a point/tell a story.
All of the above are sourced from a subreddit I love scrolling on. Data, in a weird albeit firm way, comforts me. Think of the difference in trust that a hotel chain that releases hard numbers about crimes across its properties could make versus one that relies on a manager’s reassurance that guests feel safe and satisfied. After many iterations of perceiving the world this way, I tend to subconsciously scan conversations for any form of statistic before I can let the speaker convince me.
While reading about Dyson spheres in a book the other night, I realized how truly little I have thought about this universe (and how embarrassingly little I remember of high-school Physics) I am so blessed to be a part of. In the book, I stumbled upon a conversation between the author and Freeman Dyson:
“When we talked about energy use, he [Dyson] scoffed at how unambitious we humans were, pointing out that we could meet all our current global energy needs by harvesting the sunlight striking an area smaller than 0.5% of the Sahara desert. But why stop there? Why even stop at capturing all the sunlight striking Earth, letting most of it get wastefully beamed into empty space? Why not simply put all the Sun’s energy output to use for life?”
I immediately was filled with a strange sort of regret for not having explored this gold mine of meaning. I believe a lot of what I am plagued by has only to do with a lack of meaning — what I truly search for. By drawing parallels, I can comfort myself. But what’s fascinating is how some of the greatest thinkers never guardrail their imagination. I grew up limiting the definition of imagination to only creative fields. But wonderful things happen when you sit with some numbers and the laws of this universe whilst letting your mind run free. The more you ponder, the more questions you have. The more questions you have, the more answers you’ll find that will leave you satiated. The most wonderful part of this process is that you will never run out of questions.
Another portion of the book read:
“If eating dinner is 10 billion times worse than the physical limit on energy efficiency, then how efficient are today’s computers? Even worse than that dinner, as we’ll now see.”
I believe that most people take first principles and assumptions for granted and so, I love questioning them to explore new possibilities. I asked myself why complexity and the need for energy are directly proportional. Complex systems require more energy because they have more moving parts. Then, I felt like defining energy. Energy, at its core, is the capacity to cause change. And thus, change can be defined as evidence of energy. But since that sounds rather circular, change can be defined as the difference between what something is now vs a moment ago. But then I wanted to understand what it means to be. To be, means that for a moment, the universe has arranged some of its matter and energy into a particular pattern. Everything that exists — a rock, a thought, a photon, they’re all configurations of possibilities that temporarily stabilized. It is almost like a pause in motion. As contradictory as that sounds, being continuous on the inside and static on the outside is intrinsic to the nature of science. This overwhelming revelation did in 12 minutes what my therapist could not do in 12 months.
I was curious as to what the probabilities of being could look like. Specifically the probability of configuration (a specific temporarily stabilized configuration of possibilities), stability (not falling apart right away), and persistence (surviving for a certain time). So, I gathered my scant LateX abilities and Claude’s science knowledge 😆 to work something out.
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I chose to look at the tiniest visible thing I could think of to establish a lower bound. So I looked to a small rock which can be thought of as a particular arrangement of matter and energy. The number of possible microscopic arrangements of its atoms is enormous. In statistical mechanics, this number is written as
where S is entropy and kB is Boltzmann’s constant. The probability of the
universe being in one exact microscopic configuration of the rock is therefore
For a tiny rock containing roughly N ∼ 1019 atoms, entropy scales approxi-
mately as
with α of order unity. Substituting gives
The exact micro-configuration of the rock is therefore effectively impossible. The probability that the universe allowed an existing exact arrangement of matter and energy seems to be so unimaginably rare, meaning that being is rare.
Now, how hard is to undo this arrangement? The rock is obviously subject to weathering and other disasters. Yet, if the macro-pattern survives, the rock will continue to exist. By modeling survival using hazard rates, we see how stubborn a pattern can be once it settles.
Let λchem denote the rate of chemical or mineral transformation (weathering/alteration), and let λeros denote the rate of physical erosion or fragmentation. The total hazard rate is
The probability that the rock persists as the same mineral and resists erosion for time t is
and the expected persistence time is
The exponential describes a continuous filtering process. At every instant, the rock is subject to the same risk of erasure, and its continued existence is simply the repeated outcome of not having failed yet. It’s almost like being is a sequence of non-failures. And the fact that the veil between philosophy and science is so transparent tells me I can endlessly and easily draw parallels to any question I may have in the language I understand best. The world we live in is truly enchanting and we are but specks of dust in it. Every problem I face now seems ridiculously small and easy to handle. Nothing will shake you or seem beyond your reach if you understand how the world works. I, for one, am not even halfway there but I already experience the sweetest form of security and peace. Imagine the peace I’d be at if I knew how sphalerons work…
The title of this blog doesn’t insinuate everyone must study science/math at a university level. Rather, we must be curious about the world we live in and question everything around us. It is what we were meant to do. It may answer the questions that we struggle with and give us a fresh perspective. Or it may not. Either way, the awe we will be left with is indescribable.
