Do You Really Feel the Blue Color?

It was my chemistry teacher who introduced me to “thought experiments”. One fine day, he started off with a small description about the “Schrödinger cat”, and the concept was pretty cool.

I looked up for more thought experiments. Well!! So here is one that I liked very much apart from the one mentioned above. And this essentially talks about our conscious experience.

 

Let’s consider a hypothetical situation. Imagine that you are a blind person. This necessarily means that the way you have perceived the world is completely different from a person who is able to see. Okay!

Apart from being a blind, you are a scientist who knows everything about colours. You know the exact wavelength of the colour from the sky which stimulates our retina and sends signals to our brain which prompts us say “Ok!! The colour of the sky is blue, how cool?” Remember you have never seen the colour blue and have never ever experienced the colour consciously.

Now, out of nowhere, you get back your vision and you are able to see the world. Will you not learn something new? I mean, will you not be able relate to the colour more than you had before? It’s like from now on, whenever I say “blue”, your own mental picture of blue pops up and you will be able to remember things better. Now that’s the difference between academically knowing something and experiencing it in reality.

Try fitting this idea to your own life. When you want to know something, going beyond the objective observation would help a lot. Discovering things yourself and experiencing it in actuality does you good. When you do this for a prolonged period of time you will reach a point where you will be driven by yourself to know more about things and no one can stop you!!!

You can try http://io9.com/9-philosophical-thought-experiments-that-will-keep-you-1340952809 for more information!!

Predictions

Have you not come across situations where you thought something is likely to happen but did not? Let’s say you thought your mom would give you a cake as you bagged first place, but she proved you wrong by giving you just a piece of chocolate? I am sure people have many times crossed such situations in life. But not always do your predictions prove you wrong. You might be right when you thought it would rain!!!

So, how far can you rely on it? This is something important because the science and technology world vastly depends on predictions. We try explaining obscure science through mathematics. Sometimes the human made mathematical formula go well with our predictions and sometimes it contradicts. Just take a minute or so to do this. You might need a calculator to confirm.

What is 1÷9? Your calculator might show 0.1111111. Alright! Now what is 2÷9? Your calculator might show 0.22222222. Agreed!! Now what is 3÷9? 0.333333333 is the answer. By now you might be really confident for your next answer. And yes it is 0.4444444. Well done! Now you have started predicting your next couple of answers. But hold on! Your predictions might go wrong. According to what you think your cal-C should get you the following answers for the following equations.

5÷9=0.55555555

6÷9=0.66666666

7÷9=0.77777777

8÷9=0.88888888

9÷9=0.99999999

But your calculator never gives you a 0.99999999 for the division 9 by 9. It always gives you 1. Neither you nor can I violate the result.

This just implies to me that our predictions are always approximated to some degree, small or big with the happenings in reality. When it is small we tend to say what we have predicted is right and when the gap is big we say our prediction is wrong.

One might ask if no one in the world has seen how an atom looks like, then how is it possible to define a structure for it? And I would just say, scientists predicted the atom to be a homogeneous mix initially. But their prediction was proved “wrong” when Rutherford in 1911 showed there is a nucleus. He did this by shooting alpha particles at other atoms like gold and observed the change in which they bounced back.

Since then science is improving with this tool called “prediction”. Only when we rely on our predictions we would know whether it is right or wrong which then paves way for higher understanding of the subject. So get going with what you think, be it right or wrong, doesn't matter.