http://www.wbur.org I was listening to NPR on my drive home from work last night and an Artificial Intelligence (or AI) professor at MIT explained to listeners the trials and tribulations he has experienced over his career of developing his AI technology. He claimed that in a lot of ways the industry hasn’t progressed as he might have predicted, and that this was because, during development, AI scientists have realized that we know almost nothing.
When developing things like robots, scientists must know certain human motives and causes of emotions to install parallel Artificial Intelligence in their robots, but have found that a lot of these motives have yet to hypothesized and explained. The good news I guess, is that we won’t be having any Will Smith-iRobot-esque societal crises within our lifetime, or even our children’s. I’ve always had a serious problem with overthinking, as well as a deep rooted desire to understand everything- no matter how complex the concept. For that reason, I find concepts like AI as well as a myriad of other things almost overly compelling.
On a summer night last year, around four in the morning, I began contemplating the size of the universe and attempting to explain how that influences our existence as earthlings. I find myself fascinated by all we as humanity are unaware of- which like I mentioned is quite a lot. I found it to be both my civic and personal responsibility to write an essay on perspective and complexity. Here it is:
A human body that weighs roughly 150 pounds is constructed of 7*1027 atoms. For those of you who suck at math like I do, that is the number 7 followed by 27 zeros… Seven billion billion billion. Or 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms that make up just one average sized human. Those atoms then attribute themselves to our estimated 70 trillion cells, that help us to carry out our day-to-day lives as we know them.
There are roughly 7 billion people on earth- each themselves made of “seven billion billion billion” atoms, 70 trillion cells, etc. The average human will meet only 10,000 people in their lifetime. Which means we don’t meet roughly 6,999,990,000 people. People each with their own thoughts, problems, and lives as complex as our own, that we will never know one thing about. Six billion, nine hundred ninety nine million, nine hundred ninety thousand people each with their own seven billion billion billion atoms, 70 trillion cells, etc.
The only thing that we all have in common is that we call earth our home. Earth is a part of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is then comprised of of over 100 billion planets. From there NASA has determined that there are an estimated 100 billion galaxies. Each containing their own 100 billion planets that can then be divided into their own solar systems with maybe 8 planets like ours. And one, or more than one, or all of those planets could contain possibly 7 billion people or aliens- whatever, on each of them.
So for all extensive purposes, if we know that there are roughly 100 billion galaxies each with 100 billion planets per each of them, that means there are a total of 100,000,000,000 planets in the entire universe. Which is a number so large it is indisputably unfathomable. And we are tied to our one planet, among 7 billion people, 10,000 of which we will actually meet, and you are just one person with seven billion billion billion atoms, 70 trillion cells, etc.
So although all these numbers and profound concepts may truthfully be a tad jarring, you can probably at least ask yourself: “what does this mean for me?” or “so what Mackenzie?”. I personally, find intense comfort in the grandiosity and mystery of the universe. It makes me feel less pressured and more exclusively myself.
Look at it this way, matter can neither be created nor destroyed. We all came from God knows where, and we do not know the cause of the beginning of everything. We’re all just unaware atoms floating around in a universe so big we can’t even begin to fathom let alone understand. The conversations we have and the decisions we make day-to-day will never be recalled a hundred years from now. Even the most famous and well known people- no matter the amount of followers on social media nor impact they’ve had on our lifetime will carry themselves to the end of forever.
So just take it easy, okay? Relax. Dye your hair blue and green and tell the girl you love her. The pressure both you and society put on yourself is completely unnecessary. All we have is the collective moment we are all sharing. We have no past, just memories: and the future is just predicted potential.
