The magic of numbers
By: Zugravu Bianca
Tags: Life, Robots, Mathematics, Ethics, Magic

Everything that’s around us seems to be perfectly organized and in complete harmony, though life is so chaotic and fluctuant… Sometimes I am inclined to think that each single thing can be explained mathematically, but some aspects, especially those concerning the creation, those which generate beauty have something so mystic about them, a hidden triggering factor that cannot be ultimately resumed by an equation. I’ve found myself very intrigued by what Alan Turing did, his influence, his way of seeing the human being, purely logical. I cannot leave aside the hazardous part of our existence, I do not think that everything can be determined, I am more inclined to think in a Heisenberg manner, so that for each known and proven wheel of this mechanism the other ones are left even more imprecise. However, I cannot stop thinking about his comparison of the human mind with an onion, that a person who doesn’t know how to use it we’ll keep peeling it until even the core is in the bin. Similarily, the reasoning can be applied to the human brain, what if there is nothing spectacular beyond it, it’s just a conglomeration of cells that individually taken are not worth a penny but together they magically build the most mesmerizing logical machine ever created. Though, how can we explain love, pain, sadness mathematically? Is there an equation for that? An ordered pair of numbers that when matched give you the thrill of these feelings, the intensity…

I cannot stop thinking about the mesmerizing self-consistency of this Universe that makes its wheels run so perfectly synchronized and how rich this mistery it is. I always reflect on Max Planck’s words: “Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.” Just look at the marine species, what an impressive richness we have to discover. Look at how many quantum interactions we have yet to discover. Just take the brain and how little do we know about mental disorders so far.

We want to conquer the universe but we have so many unsolved problems here. And still who creates them if not us? This wonderful ability of the human being called thinking is such a blessing and still such a curse. What shall we do? What’s the ultimate goal? Is it knowledge? And what if we have the knowledge, everything is needed for something bigger. For what do we need this knowledge? To discover? But what to discover? We are setting goals which are too ambigous, there are not palpabe.Hence, hard to be handled in a moral way. We are talking about knowing our true selves, about discovering the universe, about finding the cure for cancer, about creating a digital brain… But ultimately for what do we need these? To prove? To own? To overpass limits? And even if we realize all of these what are we going to do next. I think that one cannot presume that what we call reality is so organized and meant to be discovered wholly, I’d rather say that we are not talking about an enclosed circle, this mechanism is way smarter than us, it is capable of creating new layers and new layers, it won’t let itself be explained. It’s a perpetual fight against something that is recreating itself one instant after another. But you like dreaming big, you human, you like having new aspects to discover, you like frustrating over, you like feeling hopeless, you like the unsaid, the mystery, you like the games, you enjoy wanting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but let’s face it, you don’t want to actually stand in it, you don’t want to catch it, you don’t want to put an end to it, you want it to continue. You want puzzles.

Some weeks ago somebody brought into discussion a sensitive aspect that I’ve somehow neglected so far. He said that soon enough a dignified robot which is supposed to act, to exist as a human will come to existence. Hence, our necessity in the world will be further questioned immensely? It really hits me that maybe some day the creation will enslave the creator. Imagine a robot which is able to learn from itself and since its ability of processing and storing information is significantly greater than that of a human it will surpass our magnificent capacity in a few days maybe less. But at the same time it intrigues and excites me, because of the challenge, because of the puzzle to solve. Maybe here relies the salvation, into the imposibility of putting emotions into equations, because, my dear, even if you explain feelings by some plain words such as hormones, chemical reactions, the manner you experience them and the way you acknowledge, you are conscious about them seems more left to the metaphysics rather than mathematics and chemistry. I am really eager to know if we can fabric fear, love, despair, happiness in a lab. If they can get goosebumps while listening to classical music and tears while loosing another of their own. It seems possible in paper, you just need to induce a stimuli in what would be the equivalent of their glands. But would it be real as for a human? I am here just to ask questions and you should too.