Saturday, September 29, 2007

See the world

R's status message: "I want to see the world"
J and R are two of my 'travel maniac' friends.

During some dinner:
me: I think touring around the world is an online problem. We should also consider that we might die in any year.
So we shouldn't postpone many of those must-sees to later years. Moreover, we should consider the safety of the
destination. If we visit a risky country this year, our probability of being able to visit a safe country next year will be reduced.
J: He already suggested that. I already take this into account.

But anyway, what I want to say here is that .... by now we know that the Earth is not the World. The World is (at least) the universe that we're living in. Even if we visit every inch of this planet, it's still insignificant. The fraction of the world 2^{-k}, where is k is some astronomical number.

So we actually 'see' more of the world by studying astronomy. If we don't care about actually 'seeing', but satisfied with appreciation of the 'world', then we should study cosmology.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

机械化科学怪人的论调,唯一有点人性化的部分,也不过是人类打游戏时用的逻辑--保证“血量”足够的情况下尽量得分。
聪明得足够让人着迷,但是总用理智的大脑去面对所有事情,难免觉得遥远得让人心寒。难道就没有什么地方是你冒着险也愿意去看看,没有什么事情是你不用想也愿意去试试?

Arael said...

嗯,有这些地方的。比如香港。比如中国某些地方,我是一定要去的。

不过,也不一定是地方,也可以是其他原因。可是,就是去了又可以怎么样呢。