What would happen to you if… you were sent
to a black hole?
Or if you lived inside a volcano?
If you were caught next to a nuclear explosion?
Or what if the sun disappeared?
In all of these pretty unlikely scenarios,
you’d probably die.
And scientists could predict a detailed account
of your demise right down to the cellular
level.
We’ve always asked why – like, why is
the sky blue?
Or why does an apple fall to the ground?
But now, it seems like we’re asking why
not or what if more than ever before.
So… why is that?
And what makes us so curious about hypotheticals?
[BrainCraft intro]
One of our universal characteristics is to
be innately curious.
In the last episode, we covered how when you’re
confronted with incomplete information, you
automatically want to know more.
Some psychologists suggest we have a natural
tendency to fill in information gaps.
And curiosity taps into a reward circuit in
our brain.
This new information can trigger the release
of dopamine, which makes you feel fantastic.
But, there’s still no definition for curiosity
that can explain all aspects of it.
Though in order to better understand it psychologists
have classified it into a few types.
We can think of forms of curiosity on a grid.
On one axis, curiosity ranges from specific,
like when we want to know the answer to a
trivia question, to diversive, a ceaseless
exploration to seek novel information and
ward off boredom.
On the other axis, we have perceptual curiosity,
which is aroused by novel stimuli, and epistemic
curiosity, a yearning for new knowledge.
In all these forms of curiosity we often have
a practical goal: to understand something
better, like a puzzle, the workings of the
human heart or the nature of the universe.
These are obviously serious questions.
But then, we also ask these unrealistic “what
ifs”?
So why do we ask ridiculous questions?
What purpose do they serve?
“Now let’s see what you would have to
do if you wanted to write the entire Encyclopedia
Britannica on the head of a pin”
It turns out that genius scientists like Richard
Feynman ask these questions too, it’s not
just little kids or YouTube creators.
In a talk at Caltech in 1959, renowned physicist
Richard Feynman asked, “Why cannot we write
the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica on the head of a pin?”
And naturally, he analysed the problem.
In case you were wondering.
The head of a pin is sixteenth of an inch
across.
If you magnify it by 25,000, the area would
be big enough to contain all the pages of
the Encyclopedia Britannica.
So to fit the Encyclopedia, all you’d have
to do is to reduce the size of the writing
25,000 times.
Then, the diameter of a dot on an “i”
would be in the range of hundred-millionth
of a centimeter.
The area of the dot would contain 1000 atoms
– still big enough to see under an electron
microscope.
Feynman is known for his contributions to
quantum physics yet he dedicated some of his
precious time to questions that had no obvious
practical use.
But actually, Feynman was up to something.
He argued that if it’s possible to write
so much information on just the head of a
pin, what stops us from inventing a tiny printer
that can do it?
He said, “What would our librarian at Caltech
say, as she runs all over from one building
to another, if I tell her that, ten years
from now, all of the information that she
is struggling to keep track of – 120,000
volumes, stacked from the floor to the ceiling,
drawers full of cards, storage rooms full
of the older books – can be kept on just
one library card!”
Feynman was showing a perceptual and diversive
form of curiosity [revisit the grid], but
that led him to a more epistemic and specific
curiosity, where he wanted to know how to
solve a problem.
Feynman was imagining a future where information
could be stored in smaller or even weightless
form.
He realized a need, even if he wasn’t quite
right about the format.
Thanks to nanotechnology and computer technology,
entire libraries can now fit on tiny hard
drives and thanks to the internet, they are
are essentially a click away.
This is the bright side of “What ifs…”
They help us better examine the present, organize
our thinking around what we don’t know.
What ifs are thought experiments that can
push the frontiers of science.
For example, when we ask what happens if we
were inside the black hole, and follow the
math, we find that time and space switch roles.
And what ifs can also lead to cool practical
ideas.
The inventor of the Polaroid camera, for example,
was inspired by his impatient 3-year-old daughter
asking, “why do we have to wait for the
picture?”
Asking such simple questions might seem easy
– but although we’re born with this skill,
research shows for the average person, this
skill peaks at around age 4 and declines as
we grow up.
Curiosity is kind of an art that you have
to keep practicing.
So keep on asking questions.
Don’t hesitate to find a rabbit hole and
go down in it.
You never know what you might find at the
other end...
Like the first page of Dickens' "A Tale of
Two Cities" engraved on the head of a pin
with a beam of electrons.
