Born to do Math 44 – Metaprimes (Part 10)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Born To Do Math
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/20
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Rick Rosner: There’s an idea or a shade of meaning that you know pretty precisely, but there’s no one word that hits close enough to be satisfying. So you either have to string words together o better ou abandon that precision and go, “Well, who gives a crap? It’ll be close enough.” What’s weird about the world is that close enough is good enough, we reach out to grab something. Our reach and our grasp is sloppy and never infinitely precise, but we can still grab stuff.
The universe tolerates imprecision. None of our actions are infinitely precise. Yet, we can still do stuff. That’s due to the macro-structure of the world where you’re not trying to line up one atom in your finger precisely over one atom of the thing you’re trying to grab. The diameter of your finger is – I don’t know – 10^8th atoms wide and the thing you’re grabbing if it’s a grape is also that—
If you grab that grape a 100 times, your average or the average offness—or standard deviation of where you grab that grape might be 10^5th atoms or 10^6th atoms or more, but every time you are able to pick up the grape because you can pick up these even with this vast imprecision. We are macro things in a macro world and that macroness allows us to exist and over a long period of time as opposed to things on a micro level because they are incompletely defined in the world.
Our macroness allows us to exist and to interact with other macro stuff.
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