Apparently people have been slowly pulled off that dreadful waitlist in cowtown, none of whom have been me, yet. So the agonizing wait continues... and while my academic future hangs in limbo for going on a year now, the things I thought I knew certainly and surely, about myself, about human nature, about life, have had time to crumble a bit under the pressure. The boredom with this in-between chapter of my life, this intermission of will and want so to speak, has plagued me with my old mischief. My concentration has been subject to a drive by shooting of misery but being a veteran of this blurred vision of reality I know better than to succumb to its wrath. Instead of clawing the dates off the calender in vain hope, I thumb through pages of research papers and contemplate things like the liar paradox entitled here. Acceptance is key. My mind has never been quiet and I've stopped fighting the flood of thoughts, instead tending to them, ordering them to fetch far reaching theorems of concept and query, and poke it back with that same painstaking vigor with which it keeps me up at night.
On my numbing and nerdy quest for distraction I came across two things that thoroughly tickle me pink. The first is the WMC followed by Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
As a kid, born in the bloom of computer technology, I was heavily influenced by this growing dependency on electronics. And when I say influenced I mean gently horrified. The way my father appeared to keep his memory in the sim card of his PalmPilot unnerved me. It wasn't long before I was convinced that the more we used our technology, the less we used our brains and that they'd just sort of shrivel up from neglect, a little pruney marble rolling around in that hollow chamber resting on our necks, with little googley eyes bobbing around aimlessly. I became obsessed with my memory. Alzheimer's to this day is the worst disease I can think of, for without your memory what are you but a lump of uncertain bloody flesh with a bland and colorless personality? It is the worst nightmare. At some point in grade school I had this idea that if I wrote anything down my brain would get lazy and fat and I'd be totally useless, until dementia rendered me finished. So I stopped writing things down. I thought, if I forgot my homework assignments well then I'd just fail out of class, and I didn't want that did I? Then freshman year of college I remembered a story about this girl who didn't take any notes, just would sit there and listen, absorb, and after getting over the initial competitive jealously, I thought to myself, I can do that! Of all my classes to test this out in I chose Anatomy and Physiology. I sat in the second row, put my feet up on the first, and for an hour, funneling sour gummy worms into my eager, gnashing teeth, I would be the best sponge I could be. I cannot take full credit for the success of this venture and must admit I owe much of my A in the class to Dr. S who was a comic genius. Certainly he offended half my classmates, but to me he was a hero of science. I remember our cumulative final was just 50 true and false questions citing that he could hardly tolerate reading half-assed short answer essays from 60+ amateurs. While everyone was pissed by this announcement I on the other hand, with no notes from which to study, was totally enthralled. I think if I had failed that class my perception of brains and memory would be entirely swayed but I rocked that class and found the allure in testing my limits... It is doubtful I'll ever be up to the
World Memory Competition level but the idea is inspiring to say the least.
Next discovery is Gödel's incompleteness theorems. I will not pretend to know a lick about mathematics, a subject that comes second only to history in my worst area of academics, but I have a great appreciation and respect for this field (as I do history, and pretty much everything else I can't master). Gödel is just one reason why. Given that math is a tool for measuring and understanding our world, it follows in logic that philosophically, mathematics explores deeper questions about space, time, and in a sense, spirituality. Take his theorem. In over generalized, layman's nutshell of terms, Gödel proposes that in math there may be some axioms or propositions that are true and yet, unprovable. The implications of this in just the realm of faith alone are outstanding. Sure you can argue that there is not likely a cross over of disciplines with this particular theorem, but it does make one wonder. Just this past weekend I was tutoring my student in quantum mechanics in chemistry and had to explain to her why we can't know both the position and momentum of a particle, and that it has something to do with the dual nature of matter (both wave and particle). This too leaves me flooded with questions, questions about human duality of nature, conscious versus subconscious, instinct versus reason, and so forth.
Though art is at my core, science is my muse. And when I can keep out of trouble long enough I find such incredible treasures in both.
**inspired by RadioLab's Limitations episode**
