Hugs and Ice-cream

Aug 19, 2010 by

author’s note: I wrote this last week or so and I struggled with whether to post it or not. I felt it came off too preachy or something. I decided yesterday to post it with the explanation that it is just introspection. It is the product of me trying to figure out why I beat my head in determination sometimes, and other times give up without a fight. So please take it as I meant it and don’t read too much into it.

It takes light one billionth of a second to travel one foot, but that isn’t really a measurement of space and time in the Newtonian sense because of the Space-Time thing and a whole bunch of complicated math that isn’t very interesting.

The law of Conservation of Information tells us that no information can be lost. Not ever. It can, however, be scrambled beyond all recognition. This suggests that every “thing” and every “time” exists right now; and always has; and always will. Ugh, again with the Space-Time thing.

Its tedious. But tedious or not, this is what I’ve been thinking about lately….and hugs….and ice-cream. None of it really matters, I know. but still….

So lets Take the Internet for example. I can deposit money into a bank through the Internet, but there really was no money, no bank, no me, and really, no Internet in any real sense. Its just numbers. And those numbers never go away. They get banged around and recombined and so, a one, representing a dollar in my bank associated with me will be a dollar in another bank, or the same bank, associated with someone else, or even me again. And on another level, that 1 will always be right where it is, all the time. Pretty boring stuff.

But math is easy, and at the same time, I talk to my family, and friends through the Internet. And it seems to erase Space-Time – at least, that’s how it feels. So emotionally, Space-Time goes away and I tell my mom that I love her, and she can instantly respond back as if we were standing right there together. But its not real because of hugs. Hugs prove that Space-Time didn’t really go anywhere. All the words and emoticons in the world can’t make a hug and by extension they can’t eliminate Space or Time. Its comforting to think it does, and most people, myself included, choose to take the comfort of it over the mathematical hassle of it. At least usually. So what happens to the ‘I love you’? It gets preserved through the Conservation of Information. And what happens to the hug? Well, it was never created, so it doesn’t exist, so it doesn’t get preserved.

It is important to recognize this. And I mean really understand it. As technology moves forward, and it will, our lives have a tendency to become more symbolic in the sense that we put real value on things that are just symbols. And if the symbols are convincing enough, and we choose to take comfort in these symbols, then this reduces the need for the reality. Think of it as wanting ice-cream and getting frozen yogurt, and maybe its really good frozen yogurt and you don’t really feel like finding the ice-cream you wanted is worth the hassle of finding it when frozen yogurt is right here. In Economics this is known as Substitute Goods and the deciding factors are price and availability. There are other factors but I don’t have time, and am not qualified to teach Economics in any fashion at all. My point is: it happens all the time.

What I am qualified to say, as much as the next person anyway, is that you should be aware of the substitutions you allow. That’s all really. Just be aware of it. They build up on you if you aren’t paying attention and you might find yourself unable to tell the difference between the symbol and the reality. And then you find yourself in a world of frozen yogurt because no body can tell the difference anyway. But to me, if you want ice-cream – if you really want ice-cream – then go get ice-cream. Even if that means you have to figure out how to birth a cow, name it, let it grow up, milk it (which is awkward if you’ve named it I would think); invent refrigeration or move somewhere cold; grow sugarcane, harvest it, process it into sugar; and make the shit yourdamnself. God help you if you were craving Rocky Road or Oreo Cookie ice-cream!

Its seems like a lot to ask for ice-cream, but, we, as people, have done just that. So there must have been a reason to go through all that. If we didn’t, there wouldn’t be ice-cream. And once you’ve lived in a world with ice-cream, it would be a terrible tragedy to live in a world without it even if it does exist in Space-Time forever. It doesn’t matter when you’re sitting there eating frozen yogurt.

I think a lot of things are this way.


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