Geek Thoughts; From Theory to Practice:

Sketchy burst of thoughts… Today I continued thinking of the issue of — when a theory can be transformed to practice. This, as always happens lead me to think about narrow/broader points of observations…

Here is a hypothetical scenario (Beginning with student view of a system):

Assuming you are a chemist, who know all the theory and formulas of chemical studies. You are fronted with a toxic compound for the human body. And by using a specific reaction, according to all your theories and calculations, it produce drinkable water.

  • On what stage you trust enough your calculations and drink the water?

Of course, such a scenario would be addressed somehow equally by many scientists. And would mean testing the matter on lab creatures, overtime, yet, how much time to define a certain scenario? week/month/years/decade or more?

First similar scenario that I can take from existing culture is the talk about, for example, genetically engineered products, which has its own pros and cons, supporters and deniers.

Unlike math or the computers science, which have a very defined rules. When dealing with nature, as much as we would like to make it understandable – it isn’t a closed system, and anything we use may have reactions with other material we use, it might be as part of the reaction, or even as a tool to boarder the reaction within it – such as a glass container – it is another matter assessing the reactions between the reaction to its container overtime.

As I see it, every situation or observation got both so called “good” and “bad” sides. Yet, when talking about the scenario that I’ve described you should look both inside the box and outside of it…

What do I mean by “inside the box and outside of it”?

Because everything can be viewed in many ways, this should be viewed in a perspective of time as well… History as we define it…

This raises even more puzzling issues, for example: (Taken from the vision of scifi stories) Can a time traveler view each scenario in different times the same, without considering the whole system in a certain state? What knowledge should be added to our time traveler – in order for him/her – view the proper state of the system that he/she traveled into?

  • Would there be a need for courses in the university surrounding all the known sciences?
  • Or would there be need for knowledge of the culture/history the society that the traveler just stepped into?
  • Or even does the system he entered follow the known physics knowledge we know?
  • What are the relations between the home system and the entered system?
  • Would even entering the system, will change it in some way?

As far as we know it, when looking on the cosmos – we a little dot somewhere in the galaxy. Yet, what is, our third rock from the sun, function in the system?

Are we so Pretentious or, on the other hand, so ambitious — to even think that our little rock could produce something – that will – eventually make a change in our galaxy or other galaxies in the cosmos? (When looking at the perspective over time?)

Would our actions:

  1. Expand an existing system?
  2. Collapse an existing system?
  3. Or won’t make any change at all and balance itself?