In recent studies a lot of core theories are being modified especially in cosmology where scientists ponder things like dark matter, whether the Universe will expand or contract at the end. Nuclear physics has had to adjust theories about how the Universe executes the dissipation of energy and has discovered that not all electron traffic is local.
It was Nate Silver, a sports odds maker, who said winning the lottery at a million to one is just another experience in a person’s daily life where they win million to one odds every day. While he is correct mathematically, there’s something really special about winning the lottery!
Recently mariner’s wife cleaned the attic. She found a collection of audio diskettes that her mother and sister had made at family events. One diskette, recorded at a cousin reunion in 1981, had copied a family member singing “Tie me kangaroo down sport”. How long has it been since anyone has heard that song or even thought about it – including mariner’s wife.
She listened to the diskette for the first time this morning, which was the first time she has heard or thought about that song since 1981. This afternoon, she went to her writer’s group and, in the midst of the meeting, one of the members began, without provocation from mariner’s wife, quoting ‘Tie me kangaroo down sport’.
As they say, “What are the odds?” Nate Silver was right – she won a million to one event!
Mariner had a similar event when he was returning from a project in Taiwan in 1991. The flight home had a stop in Alaska. He was in a gift shop standing next in line to a Chinese woman in her 50s. She was trying desperately, in mandarin, to explain what she wanted to buy but to no avail. Mariner was eavesdropping and interrupted to say, “She wants to buy scotch tape.” Mind you, his mandarin was quite spotty and he could never claim to be fluent in mandarin but by chance, he knew that word.
When one thinks about the fact that the independent travels for the woman and mariner were quite different in worldly experience and sequence yet there they were together in Nome Alaska, fulfilling Nate’s theory.
In these two examples, note that one piece of information is local and current while the other piece of information comes from far away and has no dependence on the local piece. Welcome to Nuclear Physics.
The brain is trained to work the same way by matching historical experience with immediate experience. For example, have you noticed that you know the words to a pop song you’re listening to today that you learned when you were a teenager? Your brain stored that information a long time ago and sends it to the conscious mind to complete the current experience. It is how humans survive as a species.
Ancient Mariner