You know whenever you ask there’s never a good time
How do you take your heart out of it?
How can you take your heart out of this?
And how do you stop once you’ve started?
Perspiration.
Blegh. I can’t wear any of my favourite shirts in the summer BECAUSE OF THIS.
So, there have been lots of… disagreements on Twitter these last few weeks. I suppose it was unavoidable, expanding network and all.
I try to stay out of these types of discussions. I don’t do well with confrontation, or even really explaining myself (and to think, I wanted to be a teacher…). I am comfortable with my view of the world, and at the same time I generally think you should also have the right to be comfortable in your view of the world. Please note that I said generally :P
I like to borrow a rule from physics to help myself get through discussions like these. Perhaps some of your are familiar with the Schroedinger’s Cat thought experiment - a cat in a box with a vial of deadly gas set to release at random. This “experiment” serves to explain how important observation is to a given outcome. Because the release of the lethal gas is determined without input, there is no way of knowing the status of the cat in the box without opening the box and forcing an observation. One then would find either a living cat, or a dead cat. One that had no opened the box only knows that the cat is in the box, and so can be considered both alive and dead at the same time.
The second part of the conclusion - the living and dead cat at once part - is less important to my metaphor, but it felt wrong leaving it out. What’s important is the bit about forcing an observation. Physicists refer to this as “collapsing”, where all of the possibilities for an event collapse into the one possibility that is observed - by opening the box, you collapse both the living or dead possibilities into one true observation (because I am a cat lady, I always assume the cat is alive).
When you collapse to a singular observation, you establish what’s called a “frame of reference”. This means that, in these particular circumstances, one certain outcome was observed. If you opened the box to find a live cat, it is still possible that, given the randomness of the trigger, someone else could have opened the box under different circumstances and found a dead cat. Sad, but true.
Another example is running along a moving pathway - you observe that you are running at regular speed, but your runspeed plus the speed of the pathway makes you look like you’re running really fast compared to stationary objects like walls. Same event, from two different frames of reference, giving very different results.
What does this wall of text have to do with disagreeing, you ask? I believe that everyone’s opinions are valid, because everyone has a different frame of reference. At the same time, however, I do not believe that one person’s opinion invalidates another person’s opinion. These two people did not “collapse” their opinions in the same frames of reference. Something that is true for one person is not true for another.
Most importantly, I don’t believe you can apply your own opinion to someone else, because it will not necessarily hold true in their frame of reference. This is the root of respecting each other’s opinions. What is true for you is not for them because they do not experience it the same way. Expecting someone to conform to your opinion is like asking an electron to collapse to the same spin and orbit every time - usually this happens, but sometimes we find weird things like electrons inside nuclei, an improbability which is nevertheless a valid observation.
For some less serious-face, I totally used this explanation with my equally-nerdy boyfriend to explain how my atheism does not at all affect his theism, and that I don’t at all think he’s wrong - I just know that, in my frame, religion and God don’t make sense, but I also respect that in his frame, they do. I can still appreciate that some people say “I’m keeping you in my thoughts” and others say “I’ll be praying for you” and I thank them both the same. I can still appreciate that evolution was an amazing thing, no matter how it happened. Sunsets are still beautiful. Music can still move me enough to bring me to tears. This is turning in to a post in and of itself. So bye!
All those millenia have really been kind to the Prophet Velen.
YES PLATE BIKINIS.
(Source: cyanidreams)
Suddenly, my internet makes a lot more sense.
Oh troll food, the only truly funny thing on the web.
oh my god, every time I see these, I laugh so hard I cry.
(Source: 24thoughtspersecond)
THIS. Every damn day. That’s why I wear a) pants with pockets, or b) hoodies with pockets.
Folding frustrations.
