Concepts or ideas you just can't get your head around?

Concepts or ideas you just can't get your head around?

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Discussion

Otispunkmeyer

Original Poster:

12,657 posts

157 months

Tuesday 21st May
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Was thinking about this the other day. For example, what does a person, deaf from birth, "hear"? I mean they won't hear anything from an external source I suppose, but do they hear anything internally? is there some kind of sensory thing going on inside? a white noise? what is total absence of sound? I suppose without ever hearing a single note they may not have a way to explain what they are sensing in a way that relates to my own experience.

Same goes for blind from birth I suppose. Without any base line, what do they see, if anything. is it all black? all white? all brown? would they be able to explain it in terms we could understand? what does absolutely nothing look like?

For both of these... how do they think? I know I've got an internal monologue running all the time, but I have the benefit of seeing and hearing my own voice so that I can imagine what things could look like or how something might sound.

On the subject of blindness I saw a video about a guy who was going blind. He was losing his vision from the centre, outward. And I initially presumed that what he sees is normal peripheral vision, with a big black hole in the middle. But no. The information just isn't there. The photo cells on his retina are dead, so there is no information. The brain just stitches what is left from each eye together into one image and he showed it as a "jump cut" of sorts, with a discontinuity right down the centre where the left and right obviously don't marry up. So... that begs the question, what happens when the vision failure is complete? what will he see? if what he can't see now just doesn't appear at all, how is that going to manifest in the end? I can't comprehend what "absolutely nothing" will look like for him.

I suppose the classic is space. I can sorta understand it but it is just mind blowing. The amount of stars and galaxies out there, many trillions in just the small patches of sky we've been able to survey. Add on to that the likely existence of trillions more that we can't see because the light hasn't got here yet. And on top of that, the accelerating expansion of the universe meaning some are moving away from us faster than the speed of light (relatively) and thus their light will never reach us!

Doofus

26,190 posts

175 months

Tuesday 21st May
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Knitting

Otispunkmeyer

Original Poster:

12,657 posts

157 months

Tuesday 21st May
quotequote all
Doofus said:
Knitting
The actual process or you mean why anyone would find it interesting to sit and do in the first place? hehe

Doofus

26,190 posts

175 months

Tuesday 21st May
quotequote all
Otispunkmeyer said:
Doofus said:
Knitting
The actual process or you mean why anyone would find it interesting to sit and do in the first place? hehe
The process. My wife likes to knit, and as far as I'm concerned, it's some kind of witchcraft. The wool only stays together because enough people believe it will. It's a big hoax.

Ezra

579 posts

29 months

Tuesday 21st May
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I agree, I think space, as in galaxies etc, is difficult to get your head around but I also think space, as in molecular level, is equally so. At the atomic level, nothing is solid and most of what we see/touch/feel is also just space...just electrons and stuff whizzing around in 'space', all in some sort of organised chaos.

simon_harris

1,386 posts

36 months

Tuesday 21st May
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gearboxes - also witchcraft the same as knitting.

Honourable Dead Snark

435 posts

21 months

Tuesday 21st May
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How sounds/music can be recorded on to devices and replayed, particularly vinyl. Doesn’t matter how many videos I watch about it, I will never get it.

vixen1700

23,208 posts

272 months

Tuesday 21st May
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On the subject of music: Shazam.

Having that app on my phone that can identify music playing, sometimes instantly. It blows my mind.

Skeptisk

7,639 posts

111 months

Tuesday 21st May
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People who believe things without good reason (despite mountains of evidence and logic showing the beliefs to be unsupportable).

Quantum mechanics eg double slit experiments showing that single parties go through both slits and interfere with themselves

Relativity

Cosmology - black holes / big bang / expanding universe / how quantum mechanics and gravity can be reconciled

SpudLink

5,993 posts

194 months

Tuesday 21st May
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Otispunkmeyer said:
For example, what does a person, deaf from birth, "hear"?

...

Same goes for blind from birth I suppose. Without any base line, what do they see, if anything.
Possibly depends on the cause of the disability. Is the problem with the eyes or optic nerve (or ears) failing to provide information to the brain, or is there an issue with the brain failing to process the information. This could make a difference in what the brain does to ‘compensate’.


Otispunkmeyer said:
I suppose the classic is space. I can sorta understand it but it is just mind blowing. The amount of stars and galaxies out there, many trillions in just the small patches of sky we've been able to survey. Add on to that the likely existence of trillions more that we can't see because the light hasn't got here yet. And on top of that, the accelerating expansion of the universe meaning some are moving away from us faster than the speed of light (relatively) and thus their light will never reach us!
Yeah, it’s big, isn’t it. Evolution hasn’t really given us the tools we need to properly get our head around the vastness of it. We can use maths, analogies, or metaphors to reduce it to something we can grasp. But our brains aren’t equipped to deal with infinity.


Lotobear

6,522 posts

130 months

Tuesday 21st May
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simon_harris said:
gearboxes - also witchcraft the same as knitting.
I'll raise you - differentials, kugelmotors

Exasperated

34 posts

13 months

Tuesday 21st May
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Skeptisk said:
single parties go through both slits and interfere with themselves
And that's exactly how I ended up needing spectacles.

ThingsBehindTheSun

285 posts

33 months

Tuesday 21st May
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Turkey teeth - Why anybody would want to have a procedure done that effectively destroys your perfectly good teeth and replaces them with stuck on veneers that last 10 years.

Why anybody would think that utterly fake, bright white Love Island/Rylan look is desirable.

Plus from what I understand a lot of the people who have it done have no idea what it involves and end up with destroyed teeth and left in agony.


Composer62

1,720 posts

88 months

Tuesday 21st May
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Doofus said:
Otispunkmeyer said:
Doofus said:
Knitting
The actual process or you mean why anyone would find it interesting to sit and do in the first place? hehe
The process. My wife likes to knit, and as far as I'm concerned, it's some kind of witchcraft. The wool only stays together because enough people believe it will. It's a big hoax.
I'm with you there Doofus. I watch my wife knitting and agree it's basically witchcraft. I just can't see how it works.

vixen1700

23,208 posts

272 months

Tuesday 21st May
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Trout pouts and those great big spider eye-lashes that young women seem to think look good. confused

SpudLink

5,993 posts

194 months

Tuesday 21st May
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vixen1700 said:
Trout pouts and those great big spider eye-lashes that young women seem to think look good. confused
As featured in The Muppets back in the '70s.

MYOB

4,847 posts

140 months

Tuesday 21st May
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I’ve always been amazed at how tow bars work!

FMOB

1,059 posts

14 months

Tuesday 21st May
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A few here.

Schrodingers Cat.

Dark Matter.

Car Insurance.

BoRED S2upid

19,763 posts

242 months

Tuesday 21st May
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The Pyramids of Egypt. Absolutely blow my mind. We couldn’t recreate those with 100 massive cranes and thousands of workers. Yet they did it way back then with ropes and animal power!

BoRED S2upid

19,763 posts

242 months

Tuesday 21st May
quotequote all
Ezra said:
I agree, I think space, as in galaxies etc, is difficult to get your head around but I also think space, as in molecular level, is equally so. At the atomic level, nothing is solid and most of what we see/touch/feel is also just space...just electrons and stuff whizzing around in 'space', all in some sort of organised chaos.
Agree. Thinking too hard about that would send you insane. That’s why they invented Universities. To think that aliens on other planets millions of light years away would be looking at pictures of the earth when the dinosaurs were still living on it because today’s pictures haven’t got there yet. Argh.